


And Marigolds All in a Row

by blueberryphancakes



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Bullying, Gardens & Gardening, Homophobic Language, M/M, Strangers to Friends to Lovers, Swearing
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2018-08-21 20:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 22,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8259922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberryphancakes/pseuds/blueberryphancakes
Summary: Dan is angry. Angry at the world, angry at his parents, angry at his classmates who treat him more like a punchline than a person. New to Brookwood Academy, he does his best to keep his head down and take advantage of his opportunity at a fresh start, but getting through sixth form unnoticed proves harder than expected. Then, one day, he wanders into a garden with as many secrets as flowers and meets a boy who has managed to do just that.





	1. Petunias

**Author's Note:**

> Written for this prompt on phanfic by kittycatriona: "This is kind of a vague prompt but if really love to read a fic where dnp meet or otherwise hang out in a hidden, overgrown garden. Probably friends to lovers? <3" This might not be what you wanted, but it’s what came to my mind. Story does not follow the plot of The Secret Garden (which I loved as a kid but haven’t read in about a decade), though there are several references to it throughout. Namely the title, which is taken from the particular version of the Mistress Mary rhyme that was used in the book.

 

“Hey Howell.”

_Don’t turn around,_ Dan thinks as he makes his way to his last class of the day. _Don’t give them the satisfaction._

“What, are you deaf as well as dumb?”

Dan walks faster.

“Ooh, someone’s in a hurry.”

“Probably wants to get to class early so he can suck up to the teacher. Only way he’ll be passing any classes around here.”

“Don’tcha mean so he can suck _off_ the teacher?”

“Same difference, in his case.”

Laughter echoes behind him as he reaches the bottom of the main stairwell. His legs shake with barely-concealed rage as he begins climbing it to reach his chemistry class on the upper floor, two sets of heavy footsteps following close behind. He is one step from the top when a meaty hand reaches around and slaps the textbooks out of his arms. They fall to his feet and go tumbling down the stairs, much to the amusement of the two boys behind him.

Dan whirls around, skin on fire, blood pumping in his ears. Harvey Crenshaw stares back at him, clearly delighted, grinning his gap-toothed grin.

“Drop something, didja Howell?” Crenshaw asks innocently. Behind him, Jason Trainor cackles and snorts.

Dan opens his mouth to reply, hesitates, closes it and purses his lips. With a deep breath through his nose, he marches down the stairs to get his books.

“Toldja he don’t talk,” Crenshaw stage whispers after him.

“Girl in my history class said she heard him talk when he first got here,” Trainor replies. “Said he’s all high-pitched and posh like a girl who’s gone to finishing school.”

“That’s just the way they talk. Easiest way to tell a fag. They all sound alike.”

In addition to the chemistry and French textbooks with their pages splayed, dozens of loose pieces of paper are scattered on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. To be fair, Dan is partially at fault for always stuffing his homework and old tests between the pages of his books rather than putting them safely in a binder, but his chemistry assignment is due in a few minutes and is somewhere amongst the rubble, so it’s a bit late to chastise himself for not having his life in order.

The tardy bell rings when only half of his possessions have been collected. He finds another smattering of papers near a trophy case, crams them in his backpack, and sprints back up the stairs, praying that the homework he needs isn’t still on the floor.

He bursts into the classroom when Mr Leckie is telling the students to pass their homework to the front. All eyes shift to him. At the back of the room, Crenshaw and Trainor titter.

Mr Leckie crosses his arms and raises a thin, grey eyebrow. “Nice of you to join us, Mr Howell. I presume you have your homework?”

Dan gulps as he hurriedly unzips his bag, trying to ignore the way he can feel Mr Leckie’s eyes on the crumpled contents. He finds homework and old tests for almost every class. Except chemistry.

“I—” Dan’s voice comes out as a squeak, having gone unused all day. Murmurs of _“He can talk?”_ and _“I told you so”_ surface from his classmates, but he does his best to ignore those too. He clears his throat and tries again. “I did do it.”

“ _I did do it,_ ” mimics a falsely-high voice from the back of the room.

Something in Dan snaps.

“Fuck off, Crenshaw.”

Crenshaw responds with an exaggerated guffaw. “What’d you just say?”

“Boys,” Mr Leckie warns.

“I said,” Dan says, voice growing in volume, taking a few strides towards Crenshaw’s desk. He vaguely registers his teacher’s voice behind him telling him to stop. He ignores it. “Fuck. Off. Are you deaf as well as a total bloody moron?”

Dan thinks he sees the amusement in Crenshaw’s eyes flicker to hatred, but then the grin is back, devilish as ever. “Always knew you had a mouth on you. Know what they say about the quiet ones.”

For a moment, Dan considers punching Crenshaw right in his bulbous nose. As his fingers curl into fists, he weighs the pros and cons of doing something that could very well get him expelled less than three weeks after enrolling. On the one hand, his mother warned him that he had better behave himself at this school, as there are only two schools within biking distance of their house and Dan has already been kicked out of the other. On the other hand, Crenshaw’s nose would probably make a very satisfying cracking noise if Dan were to hit it just right.

Before he can decide what to do, he feels a presence behind him.

“Mr Howell.”

Dan turns around slowly, lifting his head to meet his teacher’s stern gaze. His anger suddenly dissipates, replaced by a sick feeling in his stomach. “Headmistress’s office?”

Mr Leckie nods, holding out a slip of paper.

Dan’s shoulders droop. He takes the paper and drags his feet towards the classroom door, sparing one last glare at Crenshaw and Trainor, who are snickering again. Everyone else is just staring—some in amusement, some in shock.

“And yes,” Dan announces before he leaves the room, figuring he can’t make things much worse, “I can talk.”

## ❁❁❁

Headmistress Donna Ellington is a terrifyingly thin woman with equally terrifying icy green eyes, the kind that might be pretty if they weren’t shrouded in clumpy mascara and constantly boring into your soul. Right now, they’re peering over the top of her sharp-edged glasses while the target of her gaze tries not to squirm in his seat.

“Do you know why you’re here?” she asks, voice calm and even, carrying the posh accent of a wealthy upbringing and the slight rasp of a closet smoker. Dan strains his ears for any hint of emotion, good or bad, but finds none.

Dan shrugs and tries to look remorseful. The question is a trap with which he is all too familiar. If he tells her everything that happened, he runs the risk of confessing more than he is actually in trouble for. Say only a little bit, and he’ll likely be prompted with “And…?” until he has said it all anyway. Remain in stoic silence, and he’ll be accused of disrespect. Best to act like he’s just too ashamed to speak.

Ellington must be familiar with this routine as well, because not an ounce of pity permeates her stony expression. “No?”

The end of the word lilts like a question, but Dan is pretty sure it’s rhetorical. He keeps his head bowed.

“You can play the silent game all day if you wish, but I would appreciate it if you would look at me when I’m speaking to you.”

Dan lifts his head, but he still can’t bring himself to maintain eye contact. He settles on studying her salt-and-pepper hair, which is pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head.

“Thank you. Now, you and I both know why you’re here, so let’s get on with it, shall we? Coming to class late without your homework and being generally disruptive are bad enough, but this school will not tolerate disrespect. You said extremely rude things to a fellow classmate, and, possibly worse, you ignored your teacher when he asked you to stop.”

Dan nods. He knows that he could explain the situation, tell her what happened on the way to class, but with no teachers around to witness the incident, it would likely do no good. Plus, if word got back to Crenshaw and Trainor that Dan ratted them out, his life could get much, much worse.

“That being said,” she continues, “I understand that you and your family have been through a difficult time lately and that enrolling in a new school in the middle of the year can be difficult on its own.”

Now this, Dan didn’t expect. “Does that mean no detention?”

“No detention,” the headmistress confirms, and Dan can’t believe his ears. “You will receive two days out-of-school suspension instead.”

Oh.

“Starting tomorrow, you are not allowed on school premises for the remainder of the week. You will not be permitted to make up any work that you miss in your absence. Am I understood?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“Good.” She glances at her watch and then back up again. “As the school day is almost over, I see no point in you returning to class today. Assuming you have a way to get home?”

“I have my bike.”

The headmistress nods. “Very well. You are dismissed.”

Dan doesn’t need to be told twice. He scurries out of his chair and towards the exit as quickly as he can without being overtly rude, but before he can open the door, he hears, “One more thing, Daniel.”

“It’s Dan.” Dan doesn’t know why he says it. Perhaps he’s surprised that someone at the school finally called him by his first name. Perhaps he just has a death wish.

Headmistress Ellington doesn’t seem perturbed by his correction though. In fact, if Dan didn’t know better, he might think he sees a glimmer of humour pass through her eyes, just for a second. “Dan. I want you to look at this suspension not just as a punishment but as an opportunity.”

He waits for her to elaborate on what exactly this opportunity is, but she doesn’t.

“Your punishment could have been much, much worse,” she continues, almost to herself. She lowers her eyes to the paperwork on her desk and shoos him with her hand. “Don’t expect me to be so lenient next time.”

The school day doesn’t end for another twenty-six minutes, but Dan hears laughter as he steps into the bitter autumn air.

“Reckon he’ll cry?” a voice he recognises as Jason Trainor’s asks.

“Probably. Didja see his face when he left? Besides, people say Aunty Donna is one scary bitch when you’re in trouble with her. Not that I’d know. No teacher in their right mind would send me to her office.”

Dan ducks behind a tree, digging his fingers into the bark to keep himself from jumping out and giving Harvey Crenshaw the bloody nose he deserves. He should have guessed the bastard was related to the headmistress. No wonder he acts like such an entitled prick. He could probably beat Dan up in front of the whole school and still get away scot-free.

It isn’t fair.

“Well they still might send me if we’re not back in class soon. Leckie might be a wanker, but he’ll still know eight minutes is too long for two students to use the toilet.”

“Alright, alright, don’t get your knickers in a twist. I’m done.”

Dan remains perfectly still, listening to the leaves crunch under the other boys’ feet until he hears the school doors open and close behind them. He peeks around the tree slowly, making sure they are really gone before sprinting to the bike rack, which now reeks of weed. He unchains his bike as quickly as he can, hops on, and sets off for home.

Normally, it takes Dan almost twenty minutes to bike from the school in Earley to his house in Sonning, a fact that he complains about to his mother any chance he gets. (He wishes she’d stop reminding him that it’s his own fault he can’t still go to the only secondary school in his own parish).

Dan doesn’t know it yet, but today is anything but normal.

The day’s events have him so mad that five minutes pass before he realises that something is wrong. He pushes on, ignoring the way the wheels of his bike wobble more and more violently with every passing second. He almost makes it to the sign welcoming him to Sonning when he hears a metallic sort of groan and finds himself toppling over his handlebars towards the pavement.

## ❁❁❁

_Blue._

That’s the first thing Dan thinks when he comes to his senses. He opens his eyes and blinks up at the grey sky, turns his head to the left and squints at the brown-green grass set ablaze with fallen leaves. On his right, his crimson bicycle lies mangled on the pavement, the cracked black of the empty road just beyond. Dandelions and golden flowers line the road’s edge. Nowhere can he find the flash of blue that he’s sure he saw right before he passed out.

He sits up carefully and rubs his head, surprised when he can’t find a bump. In fact, for having fallen hard enough to knock him unconscious, his head hurts surprisingly little. There’s only a dull ache and slight tenderness at the back of his skull, as though he hit it days ago instead of minutes. He pushes himself to his feet, hoping that this isn’t one of those cases where internal swelling will kill him in his sleep.

It’s fortunate, he supposes, that he somehow managed to fall to the left, landing on grass instead of pavement or asphalt. Though he could have sworn he remembers falling forward, not sideways.

His bike wasn’t so lucky.

The scratched paint is the least of its problems. The frame is dented in multiple places and bent in the middle, and the front wheel lies several feet away from the bike itself. He checks the back wheel, finding it loose to the point of nearly falling off as well, and suddenly realises that Crenshaw and Trainor may have had reasons other than getting high for skipping class that afternoon.

“Fuckers,” Dan mutters as he bends down to tighten the loose bolt as best he can with his fingers. When he’s done, he gets to work scouring the grass for the one that fell off the front.

He can’t find it anywhere.

Ten minutes and two cars pass by before he gives up. He gets to his feet, brushing dirt off his knees and praying that the people who drove by weren’t from his school, though he knows he has bigger things to worry about.

Namely, the fact that his mum is going to kill him.

As if getting suspended wasn’t bad enough. When she sees the condition of his practically new, way-too-expensive bike, he’s done for.

Unless…

Mrs Howell has been working late recently—even later than she used to. She often doesn’t get home until Dan has already scrounged around the fridge for dinner, by which point she is so exhausted that she usually drags herself to bed early without having anything to eat. Dan knows she’s sharp enough to notice a nearly-destroyed bike sitting in the garage, but maybe if there wasn’t any bike at all…

It’s his only hope. Besides, he really doesn’t feel like dragging a one-wheeled bike home today. Pushing away his fear that it could be stolen in his absence, he makes up his mind to leave his bike here overnight and retrieve it in the morning after his mother leaves for work.

He just wishes there was somewhere to chain it up. He looks around for a good tree, but all the ones he finds are either too thick for his bike lock to go around or too flimsy to do any good. He examines the Sonning sign, but it’s nothing more than a brick rectangle, its bottom flush against the ground from every angle.

Finally, his eye catches on an overgrown hedge maybe eight meters back from the road. He doesn’t know how he didn’t notice it before; it must be twice as tall as Dan himself, and its glossy green leaves seem to stand out proudly against the warm, muted colors of autumn. Picking up the bike and the detached wheel, he makes his way towards it. If he can’t secure his most expensive possession, he thinks, he can at least hide it. He shoves the front of his bike into the tangle of leaves.

It stops with a clang.

“What the hell?” Dan mumbles. He drops the bike and reaches out with both hands to part the hedge. Only it isn’t a hedge at all, he now realises, but a chain-link fence covered in ivy so dense and overgrown that it must not have been tended in decades. It’s what lies beyond the fence, however, that makes him gasp.

Through the rusty wires, Dan is met with a shock of colour. Where the grass is dull and dying on Dan’s side of the fence, it is tall and bright on the other. Flowers of nearly every colour sprout in it, numerous enough that they almost overwhelm the green. A cobbled path cuts through them, following the curve of the land and disappearing behind a gentle hill, on top of which stands an enormous oak tree. The other end of the path winds around a pond that is more cattails and lily pads than water before branching off in multiple directions.

Forgetting about his predicament, Dan starts walking the length of the fence, running his hands across the leaves and trying to find an entrance. He has been walking for a full minute when something flies over the fence and lands at his feet.

Dan stops. In the grass in front of him, seemingly looking straight at him, is a tiny bird with feathers the most shocking shade of blue Dan has ever seen. Dan stares at it, wondering if it is the blue thing he saw before he passed out.

The bird cocks its head to the side.

“Erm,” Dan says, feeling as though the bird is waiting for him to do something, though he can’t quite say why. “Hi.”

The bird turns around immediately. Dan sighs, thinking he has scared it away, but then it just hops a few steps forward, turns back around, and stares at him.

Dan takes a cautious step towards it. The bird turns and starts hopping again. Dan follows it along the fence, sure that it will fly off at any moment but continuing forward all the same. After several minutes, it comes to a stop and turns to face him again.

“What now?” Dan asks, and then he shakes his head. “I’m talking to a bird,” he says, running a palm over his face. “I followed a bird, and now I’m asking it for instruction.” He must have hit his head harder than he originally thought.

The bird blinks. Dan didn’t even know that birds could blink until now. He shakes his head again and turns to leave, mumbling to himself about the long nap he’s going to take as soon as he gets home.

The bird starts chirping loudly.

Dan turns around to look at it. It stops chirping. He starts walking away, and it starts chirping again.

“Oh, bloody hell,” he says. He turns a final time and stomps towards the bird. “What? What do you _want_?”

The bird chirps once more before lifting itself off the ground and soaring over the fence. Dan thinks he has finally scared it off, but before he can leave, the bird returns, fluttering near his head and chirping incessantly.

“Well I can’t very well fly over it, can I?” Dan tells the bird, but it doesn’t seem to care. It darts back and forth over the fence before finally staying on the other side, though Dan can still hear it chirping. He parts the leaves where he thinks the sound is coming from and, sure enough, sees the bird directly on the other side. But that’s not all he sees. On his side of the fence, mere centimeters from his hand, is a latch. It makes a screeching sound as Dan lifts it, as though it hasn’t been used in years. He laces his fingers through the wires and pulls. With a great deal of effort, he manages to open the stiff gate.

“Thanks,” he tells the bird, who then flies away as though its job is done.

The garden is even more breathtaking from the inside. And that’s what it is, Dan can now tell: a garden scattered with mossy wooden boxes that probably once acted as raised beds but are now full of wildflowers and weeds that tangle in with the rest. There’s a sense of warmth here despite the fact that it’s October, and Dan has the strangest urge to strip off his school uniform and jump into the pond for a leisurely afternoon swim, then maybe lie in the dappled sunlight under the great oak, breathing in the fresh air he didn’t know he was deprived of until this moment.

Before he can drink it all in, his phone vibrates in his pocket.

He takes it out with fumbling fingers, squinting at the screen in the sunlight that seems to have chosen this particular moment to appear from behind a cloud.

> **_The school called. Coming home early…we need to talk. –Mum_ **

Yep. He’s screwed.

Dan sighs and shoves his phone into his pocket. He jogs back to where he left his bike, grabbing both it and the front wheel before returning to the garden. He throws his possessions inside without a second thought, closes the gate behind them, and starts for his house, hoping beyond hope that he can make it there before his mother does.


	2. Elderberries

“ _Suspended?_ ”

“Only for two days.”

“Oh, _only_ ,” his mother scoffs, crossing her arms over her chest as she paces across the kitchen floor. “Three weeks, Dan. It hasn’t even been three weeks since you got kicked out of your old school, and you’re already on your way to being kicked out of the new one.”

“I’m not getting kicked out—”

“Yet.”

“Wow, Mum, nice to know how much faith you have in me,” Dan grumbles from his place at the stove. He looks down at the stew he is making and gives it a few vigorous stirs that it doesn’t need, just to have something to do besides watch his mother pace and rant.

“Well you haven’t exactly given me reason to trust you, now have you?”

Dan drops the wooden spoon he has been clutching, ignoring the way it causes hot stew to splash out of the pot and onto his arm. “No reason at all,” he bites out, crossing his arms in a mirror of his mother’s stance. When he realises what he’s doing, he unfolds his arms and settles for clenching his fists at his sides. “It’s not like I’m expected to be the adult in this house, doing all the cleaning and getting myself to and from school and cooking dinner for two on the off chance you decide to eat tonight.”

“No one asked you to cook or clean—”

“Well _someone_ has to!”

His mother stops pacing. She fixes her gaze on Dan, incredulous.

Dan glares back.

It takes several seconds for Mrs Howell to regain some sense of composure, opening and closing her mouth a few times as though she is going to say something before closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. “Look,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose like she used to when trying to avoid an impending fight with Dan’s father. “I know the last few weeks have been hard on you. They’ve been hard on both of us, but—”

“No,” Dan says, causing his mother’s eyes to snap open. “Don’t blame this on me ‘having a hard time and acting out’ or whatever crap you’ve been reading online. I’m fine. It’s the rest of the world that seems to have a problem with _me._ ”

“You know that’s not true.”

“Isn’t it though? I didn’t have that many friends at my old school, and now I have none. Everyone at this new school seems to know what happened, and they’ll never look at me as anything but the faggot who scared his dad away.”

“That’s not—”

“And as for my _mother,_ ” he continues, “well, she spends too much time hiding at work to avoid her queer son to really make much difference, positive or negative.”

At this, Mrs Howell loses her temper. Dan watches her sallow cheeks go red, her small fists clench, her honey-colored eyes flash with anger. “I will not be spoken to that way in my own home.”

“You don’t have to be,” Dan says, turning off the stove before stalking out of the kitchen.

“Daniel!”

“Don’t call me that.” As he makes it to his bedroom door, a surge of spite makes him pause and call over his shoulder, “Enjoy your fucking stew!” And with that, he marches into his room and slams the door behind him.

## ❁❁❁

> _So now that i go to a different school does that mean i cant text you with my problems anymore_

Dan doesn’t really expect Louise to message him back tonight. Back when she was his guidance counselor, he rarely took advantage of her offer to let him call or text her if he ever had a problem that couldn’t wait until the next school day, and he never bothered her so late at night. Still, given that he planned to go to bed hours ago and now, at a quarter to midnight, he’s wide awake and staring at his ceiling, he thinks that messaging the one person who might actually be willing to listen to him might help. If nothing else, it gives him something to do.

He’s surprised, then, when his phone flashes Louise’s name just seconds later.

> **_Nope!! Fire away :)_ **

Dan lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. Despite his initial reluctance to go see the school guidance counselor when his mother first suggested it last school year, he has to admit that he really likes Louise. She is young—only ten years older than Dan—yet she possesses a motherly sort of disposition. Or, at least, she acts how Dan imagines mothers who actually care about their children’s problems might act. She was the only person at school who believed him after the incident, though she didn’t have enough influence to prevent the school from expelling him. It might be sad that the closest thing he has to a friend is his old counselor, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t miss her.

> _Why are you up so late_
> 
> **_I feel like I should tell you I’m doing taxes or something equally adult, but in truth I’m binge-watching Downton Abbey. Though I’m guessing that’s not the pressing question you originally texted me about?_ **
> 
> _No_
> 
> **_Well take your time. I’m two episodes away from the end of season five and I’m no quitter_ **

Dan hesitates with his thumbs over the keypad. He considers venting to Louise about the entire situation, from the parts she already knows to the fine details of his crummy day. Louise might feel the need to respond to all of it though, and while she has indicated that he isn’t bothering her, he still doesn’t want to take up too much of her time, especially so late at night. Eventually, he settles on the most important detail.

> _I got suspended_

He half-expects her to be disappointed or at least surprised, but Louise, as always, keeps her cool.

> **_I’m sorry to hear that :( Do you want to tell me what happened?_ **
> 
> _Tardiness, lack of preparedness, disrupting class, disrespecting a fellow classmate, and willful disobedience of authority, apparently_
> 
> **_Dan_ **
> 
> _Some dickwad made me lose my homework and be late for class so i told him to fuck off_
> 
> **_In front of someone you shouldn’t have said it in front of, I’m guessing?_ **
> 
> _Try my entire chem class. Including the teacher. And to make matters worse the dickwad is the headmistress’s nephew_
> 
> **_Ouch_ **
> 
> _Yeah_
> 
> **_But hey, suspended! Coulda been worse_ **
> 
> _Thanks for the support_
> 
> **_I’m serious! There’s still time to turn the year around, Dan. Nothing you’ve done has messed up this opportunity_ **
> 
> _Most people dont look at getting expelled and having to transfer schools as an opportunity_
> 
> **_It is though! This is your chance at a fresh start. Well, nearly fresh_ **
> 
> _You sound like the dad at the beginning of a horror film_
> 
> **_Does that make you the bratty teenager complaining that there’s no wifi?_ **

Dan tries to reply _“obviously,”_ but his eyelids are finally growing heavy and he can’t quite remember how to spell. He closes his eyes. Just for a minute, he tells himself.

He somehow manages to fall asleep before his phone does, so he never gets a notification for Louise’s final text.

> **_Everything will be okay, Dan. I don’t mean to be trite, but it really is true that things tend to be darkest before the sun rises. Get some sleep. I bet things will look brighter in the morning._ **

## ❁❁❁

Things don’t look brighter in the morning.

Dan wakes with a jolt. At first, he isn’t sure what woke him, but then his dark bedroom illuminates with a great flash. By the time the second clap of thunder booms, he knows exactly why he’s awake.

He looks to his clock to check the time, only to find that the power is out. Thankfully, his phone was plugged in when he drifted off last night, and it still has a full charge. The display tells him that it is almost eight in the morning, but it is the missed text from his mother that catches his attention.

> **_Heading to work. I’ll be calling to check up on you. BEHAVE. –Mum_ **

Dan sighs. He really wishes his mother had a little more faith in him.

Then again, he was technically planning to sneak out to retrieve his bike. But that was before he knew that it would be storming.

He checks his weather app to see how long the storm is supposed to last. When that doesn’t give him the result he wants, he opens his web browser and checks multiple weather channel sites. They all confirm the same thing: the storm will last all day. In fact, it isn’t supposed to let up until sometime Saturday evening. Dan doesn’t know exactly what sitting out in the rain that long will do to his already-nearly-ruined bicycle, but he suspects it isn’t good.

Another roll of thunder shakes the house. Dan cast his pillow one last longing look before making up his mind. He throws back the duvet and swings his legs over the side of the bed, shivering as his bare feet hit the cold floor before grabbing yesterday’s jeans, a raincoat, and rain boots. He decides to forgo the umbrella, not wanting to make himself into a walking lightning rod.

The walk to the Sonning-Earley border takes far too long. If he had his bike and it wasn’t raining, he could easily make it there in fifteen minutes. Ten if he hurried. But with the wind pushing against him as he trudges through puddle after puddle, it’s half an hour before the Earley sign is even in sight.

Miraculously, he makes it to the hedge without getting struck by lightning. Even more miraculously, the rain seems to have let up a bit, and the thunder is now a distant rumble. Dan doesn’t have time to dwell on these miracles, though; he’s too busy staring at his bike. Or, at least, the bike-shaped tarp sitting right where he definitely left his bike yesterday.

He lifts the tarp cautiously, throwing it back once he sees the flash of crimson and familiar scratches. The front wheel—yesterday completely detached—is now back where it belongs, and the back wheel seems to be screwed into place tighter than he was able to achieve with his fingers the day before. Even the frame has been bent mostly back into shape. Scrapes and dents are now the only evidence that it was ever in a crash.

Dan looks around. The garden appears to be just as empty as it was the day before. Emptier, actually, as he doesn’t see any sign of the little blue bird. “Hello?” he calls, but his voice is drowned out by the rain.

Dan’s boots—a hand-me-down from his father—are too wide for his skinny calves. Still he stands in them, letting them fill with rain and waiting to see if someone will reply. The water is ankle-deep by the time he gives up, covers his bike with the tarp, and wheels it out of the garden.

When he finally gets home, he dries his bike off as best he can and stashes the tarp in some dark corner of the garage before heading to his room to change clothes. Thankfully, the power is back, and he has just finished blow-drying his hair into a half-reasonable state when the phone rings—the house phone, not his cell phone. Figures that his mum would call the house just to make sure he’s actually there.

He answers on the second ring and assures his mum that he is behaving himself, and she continues to lecture him on not going out, not inviting anyone over, not answering the door for strangers. Dan hums his assent at the appropriate times, but he is barely listening. Instead, he is thinking about a garden behind an ivy-covered fence, a broken bicycle, and the kind of person who would take it upon themselves to fix it.


	3. Begonias

Meteorologists are assholes, Dan decides as he peers out his window Friday morning. The weather report said it was supposed to storm for another two days, but for once there isn’t a cloud in the sky. Unbelievable.

Dan groans and flops back onto his bed. He wishes he could go back to sleep. Part of him thought that being suspended might even be fun in a way, that getting to stay home all day and do nothing might be a welcome reprieve from school. At only eleven in the morning on his first full day at home, however, he finds himself wishing that he hadn’t already gone to get his bike the day before, just so he’d have something to do.

He allows himself another minute of silent complaining before digging around under his bed for his laptop. Finding his loudest playlist, he turns the volume up all the way, sets the laptop on his nightstand, and heads towards the kitchen to make some breakfast.

It’s been three weeks since his father left, and Dan still isn’t used to the quiet that now fills the house at all hours. Since as far back as he can remember, anytime both of his parents were home, the house was full of either laughter or yelling. Now, when his mother finally does come home from work, she barely even speaks, so Dan has gotten in the habit of blasting music anytime the silence gets too heavy.

He sings along to angsty songs as he makes chocolate-chip pancakes. There’s enough batter to make five of them, which is probably far more than he needs, but Dan eats them all without even noticing. His mind is preoccupied with thoughts of the garden, with who else knows about it and if they might be someone Dan has met. Anyone who would fix someone else’s bike without asking for a reward must be an okay person, right? Which eliminates most of the people at school. On the other hand, they might have fixed the bike with the intention of keeping it for themselves.

He’s still going through a list of people in his mind when the phone rings.

“Hello?” he says when he picks it up. “Hey, Mum…Yep, just had some breakfast…Yeah, I know it’s a bit late…I don’t know…I don’t know…Sure…Yeah, okay…Okay…Okay, see you tonight…Huh?...Yeah, yeah, love you too. Bye.”

He hangs up and falls back on the sofa with a great sigh. His mum probably won’t call him again today, and as that phone call and breakfast were the only things he had to structure his day around, he starts drumming his fingers against the armrest, wondering what to do. After a minute, he picks up the remote and turns on the television. The woman on the screen’s glittery dress and streaked mascara let him know that his mother has been watching soap operas again, so he flips the channel to look for something else. He flips it again. And again. And again. He makes it all the way back to the soap opera before he realises that he hasn’t been paying attention to what was actually on any of the channels he just flipped through.

“You don’t understand!” the crying woman in the sparkly dress insists. “I _loved_ him. I _still_ love him. I don’t care if he’s marrying my sister, because I know somewhere, deep down, we still—”

Dan presses the power button on the remote. He stares at the blank screen for a second. Two seconds. Three.

“Fuck it.” He grabs his phone and hops off the sofa in one fluid motion, walking to the garage and pausing to grab his keys and—after a moment’s consideration—his black hoodie. He hops on his bike and starts down the driveway, not really thinking about where he is going but still sort of knowing where he will end up.

## ❁❁❁

The garden gate complains even louder than it has the last two days, as though the brief storm was enough to rust it shut almost completely. Dan stumbles a bit when he finally gets it open, clinging to the metal for support as he looks around in awe. The colors are even more vivid than he remembers, and he suddenly wonders how so many plants can flourish in the middle of autumn.

He wades through tall grass and dandelions to get to a bench shrouded in tiny yellow-white and dusty-pink flowers, stems winding around the legs and in-between the slats, rendering the wood itself nearly invisible. He sits, hands in his lap, not quite sure what he’s waiting for. The sun feels warm against his back, enough that he pushes his sleeves up to his elbows but not so much that he wants to take his hoodie off. A gentle breeze brings the smell of something sweet, and Dan relaxes into it, pretending—just for a moment—that this is his home and the rest of the world is nothing more than a bad dream.

His reverie is broken by a sudden thud followed by a muffled “ow.” Dan twists around to find a black-haired figure in a green jumper lying facedown in a bed of what Dan thinks are begonias, the toe of his dirty white trainers caught on the gnarled root of the tall oak tree.

The stranger groans as he pushes himself to his feet and brushes himself off. Dan can now see that the person is a boy around his own age, all gangly limbs and milky skin and the bluest eyes Dan has ever seen. He’s busy wondering how eyes can seem so bright from several feet away when the boy notices him and freezes.

They stare at each other. The strange boy turns to look over his shoulder, as if to make sure Dan isn’t gaping at something more interesting, before turning back and asking, “Did, erm…did you see that?”

“I can pretend I didn’t, if you like,” Dan says. He feels his pulse speed up a little when his response causes the boy’s mouth to stretch into a sunny grin.

“What are you doing here?” the boy asks, and then his smile fades into a look of mortification. “Wait, no, that sounded rude. I didn’t mean…I mean I was just curious…” The boy’s pale cheeks grow as pink as the flowers he stands in, and as he trails off he hangs his head a little, peeking at Dan through his fringe. “I…I’m Phil.”

“Dan,” Dan says. He stands and walks towards Phil, extending his hand. Phil just looks at Dan’s hand and tilts his head. Dan lowers it slowly, feeling awkward.

“You never answered my question.”

“Huh?” Dan says.

“The, erm, the rude-sounding one? Not that I meant to be rude, like I said, but I’m still just wondering…”

“What I’m doing here,” Dan finishes, and Phil nods. “Well…” Dan starts, then stops. He isn’t sure how to explain why he came to this clearly secret garden when he doesn’t quite know the answer himself. “Well. What are you doing here?”

If Phil is offended by Dan’s defensiveness, he hides it well. He laughs in a way that Dan thinks is the complete opposite of how kids at school laugh at him, warm and light with his tongue poking between his teeth. “Fair enough.” He looks around the garden, and his expression grows softer, fonder, a bit less Christmas Morning and a bit more Coming Home. Dan suddenly feels like an intruder. “I suppose I just like it here.”

“Oh.” Dan rubs the back of his neck. “Me too, I guess.”

“It’s the best reason to be somewhere,” Phil says. “Especially when somewhere is here.”

“And, er…what exactly is _here_?”

Phil smiles again, and Dan swears he can feel warmth radiating from the boy’s lips. “I’ll show you,” Phil says and turns on his heel.

(What Dan actually meant was, _‘What is the purpose of this place?’_ and _‘Who owns it?’_ But Phil is walking with determination, and Dan has a feeling that wherever he’s going will be much more interesting than the answer he might receive if he elaborates).

They don’t have to walk far. Phil stops in front of the oak tree—the same one he tripped on not five minutes ago—and immediately proceeds to climb it.

“Is that a good idea?” Dan calls up to him as Phil scrambles onto the highest branch he can reach.

“Yep,” Phil replies without looking down.

“You did just hurt yourself tripping over that tree.”

“I’m not hurt. And you didn’t see that, remember?”

Dan rolls his eyes. “Why _are_ you climbing a tree anyway?”

“To get to the top. Well, not quite the top. And not so much to get me there as to get you there.”

“You expect me to climb it too?”

“Sure do.”

“You’re mental.”

“Maybe.” Phil is now a good five metres above Dan’s head. He pulls himself onto a sturdy-looking branch that dips slightly in the middle, sits on it, and fixes his gaze on some point in the distance. “But at least I’ve got a great view.”

“I’m fine with the view down here, thanks.”

Phil looks down. “Is that your way of telling me you like my butt?” He scoots back on the branch a little, wiggling his hips for emphasis.

Dan’s cheeks grow warm. “I can hardly even _see_ your butt from here. And stop that. You’re gonna fall.”

“No I won’t. I’m an experienced tree climber.”

“Yeah, well I’m not.”

“It’s easier than you’d think.”

“Says the experienced tree climber.”

Phil shrugs. “Suit yourself.” He returns his attention to the horizon and begins to swing his legs back and forth. Dan looks to the garden, then to Phil, then back to the garden again. He crosses his arms. They stay that way for almost a minute.

“Fine,” Dan huffs, throwing his hands up in surrender. He grabs onto the lowest branch he can find, grunting as he hoists himself up. “But if I fall and die, it’s on your conscience.”

“I have great confidence in your climbing abilities.”

“Yeah?” Dan reaches for another branch, already struggling for breath. “Well that makes one of us.”

It takes Dan twice as long as it took Phil to climb to the branch where Phil is seated. He sits down next to him and puts his hands on his knees, trying to get his breathing under control. “Jesus. Jesus _Christ._ I don’t think I’ve done that much exercise in my whole life. Bloody hell. This view of yours better be fucking spectac—”

His words die in his throat as he glances up through his fringe. He slowly lifts his head the rest of the way, eyes growing wide and mouth dropping open. “Holy shit.”

To be perfectly honest, Dan didn’t really see how the garden would look that much better from above. It was already pretty impressive as it was. Surely, a change in altitude couldn’t improve it that much.

Oh, how wrong he was.

From this height, Dan can see over the fence that surrounds the garden. The trees he passes every day on his way to school scatter themselves over the sprawling hills, their rustling leaves setting them ablaze. And if the trees are candles, the garden is a vast green cake, the flowers dotting the Earth like sprinkles, the path winding over it like icing, sunlight catching on the pond and making it sparkle like magic.

“So, was it worth it?”

Dan meets Phil’s eyes, which seem to glint like the water with a knowing sort of twinkle.

“Eh,” Dan says, grinning despite himself. “I guess the view’s alright.”

## ❁❁❁

“You’re joking.”

“I’m not!” Phil insists, hands in the air and laughter in his voice.

“How can you never have heard of Kanye West? Do you actually live under a rock? Or a—” Dan waves his hands in a vague gesture to the whole garden “—fuckin’ cactus or something?”

“I guess I just don’t listen to music that much.”

“Now you’re definitely shitting me. Come on, Phil. Everyone listens to music.”

“I didn’t say I _never_ listen to music. Just…I don’t know. I guess I kind of haven’t kept up with it much lately. Doesn’t really seem necessary here. The birds, the wind…they’re music enough for me.”

Dan turns to him, sees the way Phil closes his eyes and listens to the world around him, and he thinks, _‘You are definitely the strangest person I’ve ever met.’_ And then his brain supplies, _‘And maybe the best.’_

“You’ve really got to get a Spotify,” is what comes out of his mouth.

“A spot of what?”

Dan snorts. “Never mind, Nature Boy. Go back to your birdsong.”

Dan closes his eyes and tries to hear what Phil hears. There are a few far-off chirps, maybe an owl in the distance. He can’t hear any wind, and he wonders if that’s the missing piece that would make this garden sound like music.

He’s so surprised when he hears loud whistling right next to his ear that he nearly falls off the branch.

Phil has his hands cupped together and held to his mouth, the fingers of one hand wiggling back and forth. Dan stares at him in shock, and Phil smirks behind his hands.

A speck of blue soars over the fence a moment later, grows larger, and lands on Phil’s shoulder. Phil turns his head to look at the tiny bird—the same one Dan saw the other day, he’s almost certain—and extends a finger to scratch it under the beak.

“Holy shit,” Dan says, mostly to himself. “You’re a motherfucking Disney princess.” He pauses. “Tell me you know what Disney is.”

“I know what Disney is,” Phil confirms. “Though one hardly needs to be a cartoon to do a bird call.”

“That bird came right to you though!”

“Guess he just likes me. Right, Harold?”

The bird chirps in agreement.

“Phil. Tell me you did not name that bird Harold.”

“What’s wrong with Harold?” Phil asks. “I think it suits him.”

Dan shakes his head, but he can’t help but chuckle. He reaches out to stroke the soft, blue feathers.

Harold pecks his finger.

“So you come here a lot?” Dan asks, pulling his hand back and trying to pretend that his finger doesn’t hurt.

Phil nods. “You could say that.”

“Does it ever stop surprising you?”

“What do you mean?”

“The garden. The view of it from up here. I keep expecting to get used to it, but every time I look, I swear it’s more breathtaking than the last time.”

Phil grins. “Just wait ‘til you see the sunset.”

Dan laughs. “I’m not sure I’ll stay in this tree quite that long.”

“Why not?” Phil asks. “You’d only have to wait half an hour or so.”

“Half an _hour?_ ” Dan echoes, his frantic tone causing Harold to take off. He checks his phone. Sure enough, it’s nearly five-thirty. He looks up just in case it’s wrong and notices for the first time that, while the sky above is still quite blue, the first hints of yellow-gold are bleeding in from the horizon.

“Shit,” Dan says and begins to scramble down the tree. Thankfully, climbing down is a lot easier than climbing up, and his feet hit the ground with a soft thud just seconds later. He starts for the gate.

“What’s wrong?”

Dan turns around to find Phil standing behind him, forehead wrinkled with concern, having somehow managed to make it to the ground without Dan hearing him. “I didn’t realise how late it was. My mum will be home soon, and she’ll expect me to be there too. I have to go.” He keeps walking.

“Wait!”

He stops. He turns around again and meets Phil’s eyes, as wide as the sky and twice as blue. There’s a hint of nervousness in their depths, he thinks.

“Will I see you again?” Phil asks.

Dan nearly laughs before he realises that it’s a good question. Despite the fact that they met just a few hours ago, he already feels closer to Phil than he does to anyone else his own age. Maybe anyone else in general. Seeing him again seemed like a given. “Meet me here tomorrow,” he says. “Around noon?”

Phil smiles. “I’ll be here.”


	4. Daffodils

The moment the clock strikes three on Monday afternoon, Dan is out of his seat and racing for the classroom door.

Sure, he’s had to put up with Crenshaw and Trainor taunting him about last week’s suspension all day, and sure, he’s almost certain he failed his history quiz, but none of that matters now. He’s free, and that means he can meet up with Phil. The problem is that the hours between the end of the school day and his mother getting home from work, which used to seem like an eternity, now seem far too short.

He descends the stairs two at a time, speed-walks down the hall, successfully avoids the freshly-chewed wad of gum stuck to the tiled floor and ignores every comment thrown his way. He’s nearly to the exit when—

“Dan.”

Dan recognises the quiet yet commanding tone instantly. He turns on his heel and tries not to look her directly in the eyes.

_‘Oh, what did I do now?’_ he thinks.

“Yes, Headmistress?” he says.

Headmistress Ellington beckons him towards her. Her expression is—as usual—unsettlingly blank.

He follows her into her office and stands awkwardly in the corner, fidgeting with his fingers until she motions for him to sit.

“You’re not in trouble,” she says before Dan can ask why he’s there. Not that he would have plucked up the courage to do so anyway. He waits for her to tell him the reason she called him into her office. Instead, she folds her hands together on her desk and asks, “How did the rest of your week go?”

Dan stares at her in disbelief. “I was suspended,” he says before he can stop himself. “I wasn’t under the impression that it was supposed to be fun.”

The headmistress gives him a stern look.

Dan has the decency to look ashamed.

“Believe it or not,” the headmistress continues, “I take no joy in punishing students. I use discipline as a means of helping students grow into better adults. I thought you, in particular, might benefit from some time away from school. Time to spend with your family and…sort things out, so to speak.”

“She was busy.”

“Excuse me?”

“My mum was busy working this weekend. You meant her when you said my family, right? You know what happened.” He crosses his arms and turns his head to study the barren, white wall beside him. “Everyone else does.”

“I’m…aware that you and your mother have experienced some hardships recently.”

Dan scoffs. “That’s one way to put it.”

Headmistress Ellington purses her lips for a moment, silent in thought. Dan is too busy glaring at the wall to notice the tiny crease that appears between her brows. “Dan,” she says, and her voice isn’t quite as sharp as usual. “If you need…well. If you ever want someone to talk to—”

“I’ll talk to the guidance counselor,” Dan finishes, nodding, hoping to hurry things up so he can go meet Phil.

A thin smile graces the headmistress’s red-violet lips. “Actually,” she says, all softness gone from her tone, “I am the guidance counselor.”

## ❁❁❁

Dan rushes into the garden to find Phil sitting cross-legged in front of a bed of half-dead lent lilies, murmuring words that Dan can barely make out.

“…and it isn’t as though he has any obligation to keep coming,” Phil says. He props his elbow on his knee and rests his head on his hand. “I hope he will though. He’s so lovely. Not that you guys aren’t as well. But I swear, when he’s here, he’s the most beautiful thing in this place.”

Dan clears his throat.

Phil turns so quickly that he loses his balance and tips onto his back. He looks at Dan upside-down, face flushed, hair fanned out beneath him like a dark halo. “Dan!” he says, his voice an octave too high. “You made it.”

“Yeah, sorry I’m late,” Dan replies, deliberately ignoring the things he heard Phil say when he arrived. For Phil’s sake, he tells himself. He doesn’t want to embarrass his friend further. It definitely has nothing to do with the strange, bubbly feeling in his own stomach. “Had to make an unexpected detour to the headmistress’s office after school.” He reaches out to offer Phil his hand, but Phil just stares at it with curious eyes before pushing himself to his feet all on his own.

“Are you in trouble?” Phil asks, brushing invisible dirt off his jeans.

“Surprisingly, no. Ellington just wanted to check up on me or something. Still felt like an interrogation though.”

“Ellington?” Recognition dawns on Phil’s face. “Do you go to Brookwood?”

“Yeah, I just transferred there.” Dan stops, tries to remember if he’s ever caught a glimpse of black hair and hunched shoulders in the hallway or in any of his classes. He comes up blank. “Do you? I don’t think I’ve seen you there.”

“Not anymore. I used to though.”

“Oh.” Suddenly, Dan realises that this is the first time they’ve really talked about school. In fact, they have never even discussed the fact that they met on a Friday when they both should have been in class. “I guess I should probably ask…you’re not, like, a really young-looking forty year old who befriends teenagers and then takes them back to his lair, right?”

Phil giggles behind his hand. “No, don’t worry. I haven’t even finished sixth form yet. As for the lair, well. I’ve already lured you into my secret garden, haven’t I?” He grins, tongue on view, eyes crinkled.

Dan shoves his shoulder. “Shut up.” _Sixth form_ , he thinks even as he and Phil laugh together. There are only two sixth form schools anywhere near the garden. Which means… “So you go to Blue Coat? I don’t remember seeing you there either.”

“I skip a lot.” Phil shrugs. “Not like anyone notices anyway. I tend to be slightly invisible.”

“I wish I was invisible,” Dan sighs. “Wait, so…so you probably know about me getting kicked out then, right?”

Phil shakes his head. “I don’t pay attention to gossip.”

Silence falls over them, making Dan suddenly feel awkward. Phil, however, looks perfectly comfortable, studying Dan with wide eyes, head tilted. Dan squirms under his gaze.

“Well.” Dan clears his throat. “I’ll let you get back to…whatever you were doing before I showed up.”

Phil’s cheeks regain their rosy glow. “I was, erm, talking…to the flowers. I know it’s weird,” he rushes to add, “but I think it helps them grow.”

Dan nods. “Do you need any help? I mean, I don’t think I’m any sort of plant whisperer, but I could pull up weeds or something.”

“No!” Phil says quickly, and then he blushes even more. “I-I mean, I like the weeds.” He looks back at the flowerbed. “Besides, the flowers seem okay with them.”

Dan peeks over Phil’s shoulder. Sure enough, the lent lilies seem to stand a little taller than when he arrived. That isn’t possible though. It must be his imagination.

Before he has time to think about it any longer, Phil takes off down the garden path. “Come on!” he calls over his shoulder. And then, as he has taken to doing every time they meet, he says, “I have something to show you.”

Dan follows without hesitation.


	5. Snapdragons

It’s raining. Not a violent downpour like the day Dan retrieved his bike, but a steady almost-mist, the kind too quiet to hear over the croaking of frogs and too fine to see except in the spots it leaves on clothing, the rings it makes in water.

Dan watches those rings now on the surface of the pond, cattails brushing his back and Matt Bellamy crooning in his ear. His arm aches from holding his umbrella for too long, and his feet are cold, though not as cold as they should be given that they’re submerged in should-be-icy water on a drizzly November afternoon. Yet another spark of magic he has simply come to accept as part of the garden in the weeks since he first found it.

Another minnow nips at his toes, much to Dan’s annoyance. He looks over to the pale-pink feet dangling in the water next to his own and feels even more annoyed; as far as he can tell, the minnows never pester Phil. But then his eyes trail up to the rolled-up-but-somehow-still-damp jeans, the spindly fingers threaded in dewy grass, the upturned chin and closed eyes and soft smile, and his annoyance is forgotten.

“I liked that one,” Phil says, and it is only then that Dan realises that the last song on the album has ended. Phil removes the earbud Dan offered him and drops it into Dan’s outstretched palm, careful not to touch, as he always is. It’s something Dan noticed shortly after he and Phil met, and though he often wonders exactly what might have happened to Phil to make him so unwilling to touch people, he never asks about it. In return, Phil never asks Dan about home or school or the reason Dan flinched the one and only time Phil called him Daniel. It is their unspoken rule that the garden is to be treated as a sanctuary, an escape from the outside world where nothing matters but the bees and the flowers and each other, and Dan has no desire to break the spell.

“Likes Muse,” Dan says, nodding to himself and putting his earbuds and phone into his backpack before tossing it to the side. He closes the umbrella and throws it to the side as well; now that his electronics are safe, he doesn’t mind getting rained on a little. “We’ll make a music buff out of you yet.”

Phil makes a happy sort of humming noise as he flops onto his back, seemingly unperturbed by the wet grass beneath him. “That’s probably the first band you’ve shown me that hasn’t confused me, scarred me, or made my ears hurt. Don’t get your hopes too high.”

Dan laughs before copying Phil, folding his arms behind him before lying all the way down. He turns his head so the rain doesn’t fall directly into his eyes, and his gaze lands on Phil. It seems that it’s doing that more and more lately, soft skin and sharp bones pulling at his attention the way the earth pulls at apples, natural and unstoppable and feeling very much like falling.

Phil, for his part, never seems to notice the way Dan sometimes studies him for long stretches of time, unable to look away. He certainly doesn’t notice now, with his eyes closed and his face upturned, letting raindrops speckle his cheeks like new freckles, the corners of his lips tilted almost imperceptibly upwards. It isn’t uncommon for them to spend afternoons this way, especially when the sky is grey and dreary as it is now. On nicer days, they sit in the tree or walk along the cobbled path to admire the garden. But on days like today, Phil tends to close his eyes, likely finding beauty in his own imagination.

Dan prefers to look at Phil.

More and more often, they talk very little. Phil has been rather quiet from the start, and while Dan initially felt the need to fill any silence longer than a few seconds with mindless babbling, that urge faded with time and without effort. _That’s when you know you’ve found somebody really special,_ he thinks. _When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably share silence._

He doesn’t realise that he has spoken aloud until Phil asks, “Did you just quote Pulp Fiction at me?”

Dan raises his eyebrows, though Phil doesn’t see it as his eyes are still closed. “You’ve seen Pulp Fiction?”

“Of course I have. It’s a classic.”

“Oh, _that’s_ a classic but Gold Digger isn’t. I see how it is. You had me thinking you were this magical nature boy who’s too busy taking care of his plants to bother with frivolous human technology, but really, you just hate music.”

“I don’t hate music,” Phil argues, though there is laughter in his voice. “So I don’t keep up with the top forties. Sue me.”

“Maybe I will.” Dan raises his hands in the air, spreading them apart as though framing an invisible headline. “ _Dan versus Phil._ It’ll be the trial of the century.”

“ _Howell versus Lester,_ you mean,” Phil corrects. “I think they usually use the last names.”

“Been sued a lot, have you?”

“I have my secrets.” He cracks his eyes open, gives Dan a sideways look, and grins.

They fall back into companionable silence. Phil closes his eyes again, and this time Dan does the same. He tries to feel what Phil feels, focuses on the individual pinpricks of icy water on his face until they start to fall slower, gentler, and finally stop.

“You are, by the way,” Phil says suddenly.

Dan lifts his head. He raises an eyebrow that Phil can’t see, but his friend must hear the unspoken question anyway.

“You said you can only share comfortable silence with someone very special.” His eyes open, wide and earnest and bluer than cornflowers. “You are.”

Dan doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he just turns his head, hoping the action is enough to hide his cheeks, which are surely too red to be excused by the cold. His eyes find the sky, where the clouds have gone pink and parted to reveal deep blue interrupted by rays of sunflower gold.

“I should go,” Dan says. With the end of Daylight Saving, he hoped he would finally be able to stay long enough to watch the sunset with Phil, but he can only ever stay for the very beginning. _One day,_ he promises silently, and he pulls his feet out of the water. Phil follows suit even though he doesn’t have to—as far as Dan can tell, he doesn’t have a curfew—and tags along while Dan puts on his shoes, collects his backpack, and climbs onto his bike.

“See you tomorrow?” Phil asks. He asks some variation of this question every day, seemingly never sure that Dan will actually come back, though Dan’s response is always the same.

“Of course.”

## ❁❁❁

Dan knows he’s in trouble when he sees his mother’s car parked in the garage.

“Shit,” he mutters and leans his bicycle against the wall as quietly as possible. He pulls off his shoes—still damp, as he didn’t properly dry his feet before putting them on—and carries them into the house, tiptoeing, praying that his absence has gone unnoticed.

He manages to hold onto hope until he passes the kitchen.

“Ahem.”

“Mum!” Dan says, dropping his shoes and turning towards the kitchen entryway, past which his mother sits at the table, eyebrows raised, arms crossed. “You’re home early.”

“Slow day at the office,” she replies, tone unnervingly even. For a moment, she reminds Dan of his school’s headmistress, except that her anger is veiled far more thinly. “You’re home late.”

“Yeah.” Dan shifts his weight between his feet, staring at the wall behind his mother’s head. “I…erm…had detention.”

“Detention.” She nods in a way that indicates she doesn’t believe him for a second. “For three hours?”

 _Crap,_ Dan thinks. “Well…it takes a while to bike home, and—”

“Dan.” Mrs Howell sighs, pinches the bridge of her nose, tries to stay calm. “I have known you for all sixteen years of your life. I know when you’re lying.”

“Do you?” Dan asks before he can stop himself.

She opens her eyes, near twins of his own in both color and stubbornness. “Yes,” she states. “I do.” A beat. Then, harshly, quietly, “I was worried sick when I came home and you weren’t here.”

Guilt twists in Dan’s gut. He drops his gaze to his soggy socks. “I’m sorry.”

“Just tell me where you were,” she says. She doesn’t sound as angry as Dan originally thought she was. Mostly, she sounds tired.

Dan shrugs. “I was just hanging out with a friend.”

Even with his head down, Dan can practically see his mother’s eyebrows shoot up. “A friend?”

Dan crosses his arms over his chest. “Don’t sound so surprised.”

“I’m not,” she insists unconvincingly. Dan raises an eyebrow at her. “Sorry. I just…what’s their name?”

Dan is quiet for a moment, debating. Finally, he mutters, “Phil.”

“Phil,” she nods. “And is he—”

“It’s not like that.”

“I was just going to ask if he was nice.”

Another stab of guilt. Dan swallows thickly. “Yeah,” he says. “He is.”

His mother smiles. “I’m glad.” The smile fades. “But next time you go over to Phil’s, let me know, okay?”

Dan almost corrects her but stops himself. He can’t think of any real reason not to tell her about the garden—it’s not like he’s been doing anything dangerous or illegal there—but something about it seems too sacred to speak of. “I will,” he promises. It isn’t exactly a lie.

The smile returns. “Good.” She stands up, crosses the room, and envelops Dan in a tight hug. He hesitates, more surprised by the physical affection than he is by the fact that he isn’t being yelled at, before slowly bringing his arms around her waist. “It’s good that you’re making friends.” She pulls back so she can look him in the eye, but she keeps her hands on his shoulders. “I know you must have been lonely lately, what with the new school and me working so much and…well. I…I wish I could promise that I’m going to start working less, but I’m afraid, for now at least, I can only promise to try to spend more time with you when I’m here. And I’m glad that you have a friend to keep you company the rest of the time.”

“I’m fine,” Dan insists, squirming under the unusual attention he’s getting.

Mrs Howell gives him her disbelieving look again, but she lets it go anyway. She hugs Dan once more, tells him dinner will be ready in half an hour or so, and nods when he asks if he can go to his room now.

“And Dan,” she calls after him when he is almost out of the kitchen, “bring me your laptop. You aren’t allowed to use it for anything but schoolwork for a month.”

Dan stops in his tracks. “What? What happened to being glad that I made a friend?”

“I still am. This is for lying about where you were this afternoon.”

Dan hangs his head. “Yeah, okay, fair enough,” he grumbles. He can do pretty much all of his browsing from his phone anyway.

As if reading his mind, his mother says, “And don’t even think about using the internet on your phone. As soon as possible, I’m changing the Wi-Fi password, and don’t think I won’t notice if you’re using data.”

“Now that’s just evil.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Would you rather be grounded?”

Dan almost says yes; normally, he would rather be confined to the house than lose his internet privileges. But then he remembers Phil, and he realises what his mother is doing. He rushes back into the kitchen and places a soft peck on his mother’s cheek. “You’re a good mum,” he whispers.

“I’m rather fond of you as well, sweetheart,” she says. She gives him a wide smile, eyes crinkling in a way they haven’t lately.

Dan mirrors the expression and, for the first time in months, feels like he belongs to a family again.

Then, her grin still intact, Mrs Howell says, “But you still have to bring me your laptop.”

## ❁❁❁

Dan might not be able to use his phone for the internet, but at least he can still text.

> _Louise my mum banned me from the internet entertain me_

Louise replies almost instantly.

> **_That’s not in my job description_ **
> 
> _You arent my guidance counselor anymore_
> 
> **_Touche_ **

And then, a second later:

> **_What’d you do to lose your internet privileges_ **
> 
> _I might have stayed out late without asking first…and then lied about where i was_

Dan expects another lecture. He knows he deserves it. Instead, Louise just asks,

> **_Were you safe?_ **

He smiles at his phone. If only all adults were more like Louise.

> _Yeah i was just hanging out with a friend_
> 
> **_Okay, now that’s out of the way, stop lying to and worrying your mum!_ **

Ah, there’s the lecture.

His phone buzzes again.

> **_Wait…friend?_ **
> 
> _Why is everyone so shocked to hear that i socialize with other human beings_
> 
> **_Sorry, sorry, just…a bit surprised to hear you talking about a friend instead of an enemy, is all. I’m happy for you. Who are they? What are they like? Do you have many classes together?_ **
> 
> _His name is phil. Odd but in a nice way. No classes together, he doesn’t even go to my school_
> 
> _Actually, he goes to blue coat. Maybe youve seen him_
> 
> **_Surely you don’t mean Phil Johnson in year 13??_ **
> 
> _No his last name is lester. He actually transferred there around the same time i left_

Louise doesn’t respond for two whole minutes.

> **_We haven’t gotten any transfers lately_ **

Dan stares at the message for far too long, not quite able to process its meaning.

> _Hes pretty quiet, maybe you just havent noticed him_

He waits for a response. When one doesn’t come right away, he stares at his phone screen until it falls asleep.

He wishes he could do the same.

A soft pattering sounds on the roof. The rain from earlier is back, Dan realises, and it soon picks up speed. If the night was not quite dark before, it certainly is now.

Just as Dan thinks this, the room is illuminated by a flash of lightning, eerie purple-blue interrupted by the gnarled shadows of tree limbs. The trees here, he has noticed, aren’t nearly as friendly as the ones in the garden. He pulls the duvet up to his chin and doesn’t dare look out his window.

The house is shaking with the force of a particularly loud clap of thunder when his phone vibrates again, so Dan doesn’t notice that Louise has finally texted him back until the rumbling stops. She only texts one word. A fairly innocuous word, but Dan’s stomach drops all the same.

> **_Maybe._ **

## ❁❁❁

Technically, Dan could be on his way to the garden right now. The school day is over, and there is nothing stopping him from opening his phone, texting his mum that he is going to Phil’s, and spending the rest of his day the same way he has for the last few weeks. Minus an internet connection, of course.

Yet here he is, rooted to the spot in front of the headmistress’s office as the last few students without afterschool activities filter out of the building.

“May I help you?”

Dan jumps, letting out a noise that could generously be described as a yelp but more realistically described as a squeak. He spins around to find the headmistress looking at him in a way that feels very much like looming despite the fact that she is nearly a head shorter than he is.

“But…” Dan looks back to the wooden door with her name on it to make sure it is still closed, points at it dumbly, looks back at her.

“Believe it or not, Dan, I don’t actually live in there.”

“Oh,” is all Dan can think to say.

“Is there something you wish to discuss with me?”

“No,” Dan replies automatically. He hunches his shoulders, shuffles his feet. “I mean…maybe. Sort of. It’s…not important.”

Before he has a chance to make some excuse and dash out of the building, she is skirting around him to unlock her office door, striding to her desk, and sitting down at it with purpose. For a moment, they simply watch each other from opposite sides of the doorway.

“Well?” she says when it becomes clear that Dan isn’t going to move anytime soon. She raises a razor-sharp eyebrow, folds two razor-sharp hands.

Dan enters the room slowly, carefully, having the strangest feeling that he’s the unfortunate first victim in a horror movie. He stands behind the proffered chair instead of sitting in it, gripping the back with all his might.

Ellington doesn’t mention it. She doesn’t mention anything. She spoke her piece, and now she sits. Watches. Waits.

“I made a friend,” Dan announces, unable to take the silence any longer.

If Ellington is surprised, she doesn’t show it. She nods. “Would you like to tell me about them?”

It’s an out, Dan realises. She’s allowing him to change the subject, to make an excuse and leave.

He moves around to the front of the chair and sits.

“We…we didn’t meet at school. I crashed my bike, and I think he might have fixed it for me.”

“Might have?”

“We’ve never really talked about it.”

Ellington nods as though she understands.

“He told me he used to go here. Maybe you know him?” He doesn’t intend for it to come out as a question, but it does.

“Probably.”

“His name is Phil Lester.”

For the first time since Dan met her, the headmistress’s outer confidence melts away. Her eyebrows come together in confusion, and there’s a look in her eye that might be interpreted as concern.

Or fear.

“When was it that he said he went here?” she asks.

“Up until a couple of months ago, right around the time I transferred.”

 _Oh god, he’s secretly forty,_ Dan thinks, and he waits for the headmistress to confirm it. What she actually says, though, is so much worse.

“Dan,” she says, and she sounds _careful,_ and that might be the most troubling thing of all. “I’m not sure who this friend of yours is, but I think it’s best you stay away from him. He’s not who he says he is.”

Dan opens his mouth to reply, but no words come out.

“I’ve worked here for almost a decade,” she continues. “I know every student who passes through these halls, if only by name. I’ve only ever known one Phil Lester. And, I assure you, your friend is not him.”

“H-how do you know?” Dan asks, heart racing.

She purses her lips, considering, then shakes her head. “Because Phil Lester died two years ago.”


	6. Dahlias

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "I'll try not to let it be like two months in between updates again."  
> -me, a liar and an asshole, about two months ago

“Dan?”

Dan doesn’t bother looking up from the sink where he is washing dishes after dinner. “Hm?”

“Are you alright?” his mother asks.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well, for starters, you’ve been scrubbing the same plate for about five minutes now.”

Dan stops, sponge in the middle of another rotation, staring at his wrinkled fingertips. “Guess I was distracted,” he mumbles, and he gives the plate a final rinse before placing it in the dish drainer and grabbing another.

A delicate hand reaches around his shoulder to lower the plate back into the sink. “Let me do the rest.”

Dan sighs, turning to look into his mother’s worried eyes before averting his gaze to study the spots around her temples where grey is beginning to creep into her dark hair. “I’m fine,” he reassures her.

“Whether you’re fine or not, you did all the cooking. I should take over cleanup.”

It’s true that she didn’t get home from work early enough to make dinner, but she at least managed to make it in time to sit down and share pasta and silence with her son. She’s trying, Dan can tell, and he appreciates it.

He just wishes she would go back to being unobservant.

“Okay,” he says, shrugging and stepping out of the way to make room for her at the sink. Maybe if he lets her do this, she’ll drop the argument.

“Don’t go yet,” she says before he can make it out of the kitchen. “Please.”

Wishful thinking.

He stops in the doorway. He doesn’t ask why she doesn’t want him to leave, and she doesn’t volunteer the information. For a long moment, the house falls back into its usual, empty silence.

“Have you gone to Phil’s lately?” she asks, finally, taking Dan by surprise. He expected her to keep trying to figure out what was wrong with him, but he didn’t think she’d guess the problem so soon.

Dan shrugs. “Not really.”

“Did something happen?”

“No,” Dan answers a bit too quickly. He shuffles his feet, folds his arms, reminds himself to act cool. “I can be friends with someone and not hang out with them every day.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.” His mother purses her lips, considering. “When you told me about Phil…and I suppose for a while before that, looking back…I know I wasn’t around enough to really know, but, from what I could tell, you just seemed…” She looks up at the mildewed ceiling as though it might give her the right words, shakes her head, looks back at her son. “Happier.”

 _I was,_ Dan thinks.

“I’m fine,” Dan says. “Can I go to my room now?”

Mrs Howell sighs. “Yeah, you can go.” Before he can get away, she strides towards him, stands on her toes, and tilts his head down to place a gentle peck on his forehead. “Thank you for dinner.”

“Mm-hm,” Dan responds and resists the childish urge to wipe her lipstick off his skin. He retreats to his room with his hands in his pockets but his head held high.

## ❁❁❁

Dan _is_ fine.

It’s been a week and five days since he last saw Phil. He’s honest enough with himself to admit that he misses him, and that he misses the garden, and that he sometimes feels guilty about having suddenly abandoned both with no explanation. But then he remembers that Phil isn’t really Phil and that he doesn’t have any reason to feel any of those things. And so he decides to stop.

He starts taking a different route between home and school, one that adds ten minutes to his journey but allows him to avoid the garden entirely. He puts effort into his schoolwork and pays attention in class for once, if for no other reason than it keeps his mind on other things. And whenever images of tangled flowers and blue eyes start to crop up in his head, he puts his headphones on, turns his music up, and stares at his drab, grey bedspread until his thoughts are no more coherent than television static.

It sort of works.

And okay, maybe he isn’t exactly _happy,_ but he isn’t crying himself to sleep either. He’s dealing with it. He has everything under control.

Everything, perhaps, except the weather.

With December approaching fast enough that fairy lights and wreaths are beginning to appear on a few of the neighbours’ houses, it’s certainly late enough in the year that it _could_ snow. Yet due to global warming or air currents or whatever higher power he has apparently ticked off, Dan leaves school one miserable Tuesday afternoon to find himself in the middle of a not-quite-ice-cold rainstorm, armed with nothing but a decidedly-not-waterproof jacket, a bag full of textbooks he can’t afford to replace, and a bicycle that has seen better days.

He just wants to get home as soon as possible. It’s the only coherent thought his mind can focus on over the cold sting of raindrops on his bare cheeks, which might be why he doesn’t even realise which route he is taking until he is riding his bike past the garden gate at a speed that would be dangerous even if it wasn’t raining. Though it isn’t just recognition of his own absentmindedness that takes him by surprise.

“Phil?” Dan says, and then, “Shit,” as he realises that trying to brake on wet pavement at the speed he was going was probably a bad idea. He closes his eyes and braces himself for impact.

It never comes.

He opens his eyes slowly, one at the time, and finds himself staring into familiar blue irises. He trails his gaze down to angled shoulders, follows the sleeves down to knobby wrists, to long fingers wrapped tight around the bar that joins his bike’s handlebars. Somewhere in the shadowy depths of his mind, he wonders how Phil moved so quickly from the grassy spot against the fence where Dan saw him sitting a moment ago, but the rest of his brain is a whirlwind of emotions at seeing Phil again at all.

 _‘Thanks for saving me,’_ he should probably say, or _‘Long time no see,’ or ‘Can we talk about the fact that you’re supposedly dead?’_

“It’s storming,” he says instead.

Phil looks up at the sky then back at Dan. “I noticed.”

“So what were you doing sitting out here?”

Phil tilts his head. He offers Dan a crooked smile, sweet and melancholy. “Hoping to see you.”

The sticky bitterness of guilt fills Dan’s mouth, travels down his throat, settles in his stomach like a rock.  It stays there even as he remembers why he is still angry with Phil, as he stumbles off his bike and drags it out of Phil’s grasp by the seat. “Well, you saw me,” he says, and starts walking his bike down the pavement towards home.

“Dan!”

Dan pauses for a fraction of a second, shakes his head, keeps walking.

“Will you at least tell me what I did wrong?”

Dan doesn’t need to look back to see the hurt on Phil’s face; he can hear it plainly. He walks a little slower, takes a few more steps, and finally stops. He turns his head to see Phil still standing several feet away, not even trying to follow him, nearly lost behind a curtain of rain. He sighs, hangs his head, and starts walking back the way he came.

“We should find some shelter,” he says as he approaches.

Phil nods. “I know a place,” he says, and jerks his head to the side before walking down the pavement in the opposite direction of Dan’s house. He doesn’t look back to see if Dan is behind him.

Dan abandons his bike and follows Phil past the garden until they come to a stop at a dilapidated toolshed just beyond the south side of the fence. The door creaks on rusted hinges as Phil swings it open so that he can clamber inside, stepping back into the shadows to allow Dan to follow.

“You’re not gonna, like, cut me up into a million pieces and eat me or anything, right?” Dan asks with a nervous chuckle, only half-joking.

Phil frowns. “I’m making you uncomfortable,” he says, his tone somewhere between surprised and horrified, and he hops back down into the grass. “I…I’m sorry. I didn’t realise.” He sucks in a breath through his teeth, and Dan notes that it’s raining hard enough that Phil could be crying and he wouldn’t even know. “You should go home. I’m sorry for…well, I’m just sorry.” He ducks his head as he starts back for the garden.

As Phil retreats, hunched in on himself and almost small, Dan debates stopping him. He has a feeling that, whatever Phil’s story is, Dan would be better off not getting tangled up in it. He could let Phil leave right now, and his life would go back to the way it was before. Back to normal.

It takes him exactly eight seconds to make up his mind.

“They said you died,” he calls out, and it isn’t the _‘wait, don’t go,’_ that was meant to come out, but it gets the point across.

He sees the moment the words register in Phil’s mind, the way Phil stops in his tracks and his already tense shoulders tense up even more. “Who’s ‘they’?” he asks without turning around. Dan can barely hear the words over the rain.

“Ellington,” Dan answers. “And an obit in the library dated two years ago.” He waits, and when Phil doesn’t respond, he walks forward. He stops less than a foot away from Phil’s back. “Who are you really?”

It takes a moment for Phil to say, in a voice just above a whisper, “I’m Phil Lester.”

“So you faked your death then? Or you just happen to share a name with someone who died? Someone who went to the school _you said_ you used to go to and is the only person of that name the headmistress remembers?”

“I did tell you I was a bit invisible,” Phil reminds him, and Dan can’t tell if his tone is humourous or sad.

Maybe it’s both.

“You should go home,” Phil says before Dan can respond, finally turning to face him. His eyes mimic the air around them, heavy and damp, but neither winter nor pain can steal their warmth. “You’re going to get sick standing out here for so long.”

“And you won’t?”

Phil opens his mouth, closes it, shrugs and opens it again. “I’ll be fine.” He turns on his heel and stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Go home, Dan.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Dan calls after him. “What if I want more than a few cryptic answers?”

This time, Phil doesn’t stop walking. He doesn’t acknowledge Dan in any way. Which leaves Dan with only one choice if he doesn’t want to let Phil get away. He jogs down the pavement to catch up to Phil and reaches out to grab his shoulder.

Or he tries to.

It’s in that moment that Dan realises Phil may not have been lying to him after all.


	7. Hydrangeas

“Well that was one way of telling you, I suppose,” says Phil, chuckling unconvincingly, a weak attempt at humour to break the tense silence.

Dan, who has been gaping wide enough to catch raindrops in his mouth for what feels like hours (but definitely isn’t), remains silent. Not just vocally, but mentally. Somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, he is vaguely aware that he should be buzzing with questions, but he isn’t. For once, his overactive brain seems to have shut itself off.

“Do you still wanna go home, or…?” Phil trails off.

Dan honestly isn’t sure what he wants until he finds himself shaking his head.

“Should we head back to the shed then? Get out of the rain?”

Dan nods.

He follows Phil to the shed in a daze, noting once they get there that it’s far cleaner on the inside than he expected. There isn’t a cobweb in sight, and as he sits on the floor he finds that there isn’t much dust settled on the old wooden planks. Phil grabs an electric lantern from the corner and switches it on, its warm glow making the place seem almost cozy. Almost as though someone used to live there.

“I stayed here for a while when I first…” Phil starts to explain, then stops. “You’re safe here,” he says instead.

“Thanks,” Dan says, his first words in many minutes. He doesn’t know what exactly he’s thanking Phil for, but it seems like an appropriate thing to say.

Phil nods but doesn’t say anything else, watching Dan expectantly as if waiting for him to address the elephant in the room. Or the incorporeal being in the shed, as the case may be. Dan just wishes he knew where to start. For a long time, the only sound is that of heavy rain on the metal roof.

“My hand went through you?” Dan says finally, though it comes out more like a question than he intended. Like he’s expecting Phil to laugh and tell him he’s imagining things. It’s what he’s hoping for, at least.

Phil doesn’t laugh, though he does offer Dan a sheepish smile, rubbing the back of his neck and looking almost as uncomfortable as Dan feels. “Yeah, I suppose it did.”

Dan blinks once, twice, opens his mouth then closes it. “How?” he settles on asking, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

This time, Phil does laugh. It’s short, shaky, and unconvincing. “I thought that’d be obvious by now.”

Dan looks back and forth. For what, he’s not sure. A neon sign, perhaps, or someone with a camera waiting to tell him he’s been pranked. No such clue appears, so he settles his gaze back on Phil. Stares. Waits.

“I’m—” Phil clears his throat, gestures vaguely to the air around him “—you know…a ghost.”

Dan double-checks for hidden cameras. “But,” he starts slowly, “ghosts aren’t real?”

Phil inclines his head. “That might be a valid point if I wasn’t living proof that they are. Well, not _living,_ but—”

“No,” Dan interrupts, standing abruptly. He can feel Phil’s eyes on him as he starts to pace the floor. “Ghosts don’t exist, and even if they did, my best friend wouldn’t be one.”

“Best friend?”

Dan stops in his tracks and turns to face Phil. “ _That’s_ the part you’re focusing on?”

Phil shrugs. “I’ve had a lot of time to get used to the whole ghost thing.”

“Stop saying that!” Dan growls in frustration, scrubbing his palms over his face before pointing a finger at Phil’s. “You’re not a ghost. You aren’t…” He trails off, looks at Phil.

Phil stares back, eyes wide and unafraid.

Dan’s shoulders sag. “You aren’t dead.”

Phil’s expression softens. Dan’s limbs do the same. He lets himself sink to the floor with a heavy thud, rests his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. In his periphery, he sees Phil reach out as if to pat his shoulder but pull away at the last minute, apparently thinking better of it.

“Alright,” Dan says after a few shaky breaths, still staring at his knees. “Let’s just say, hypothetically, that you are, you know…”

“A ghost.”

“That. How come you can, like, turn that lantern on and stuff, but you can’t touch me?”

“I could if I wanted to,” Phil says, crossing his arms over his chest. “You just surprised me, is all.”

“So if I were to touch you now,” Dan says, making no movement to do so, “and if you were ready for it, you’d feel…like anyone else?”

Phil sucks his lip into his mouth, running his teeth back and forth along it. “I’m not sure,” he says after a moment. “I don’t actually know what I feel like to other people.” And then he does something Dan doesn’t expect: he sticks out his hand, palm-side up. An invitation.

Dan hesitates. He studies Phil’s hand for any abnormalities, but it appears just as real as his own. It’s delicate and pale but decidedly solid-looking, with lines and freckles and even veins working their way up his knobby wrist. Dan reaches out slowly, unsure what to expect.

The second his fingers brush Phil’s, he gasps and pulls back.

“What?” Phil looks worried now. “Did I hurt you?”

“No,” Dan says, cautiously reaching back for Phil, this time prepared for something that looks but does not feel like skin. “I was just surprised, I guess.”

He begins tracing the lines of Phil’s palm, mesmerized. It feels like wind, Dan thinks, warm air pushing against his fingertips when he presses down but feeling like a gentle breeze when he eases back. Phil is the first day of summer and a hurricane all at once, captured and confined to a human-sized space.

“So what do I feel like?”

Dan stills his movements, looks up into Phil’s genuinely curious eyes. “Weird as hell,” he says.

Phil scoffs indignantly.

Dan lets out a short laugh. “Not bad weird, though.” Without thinking, he threads his fingers between Phil’s. “Nice weird.”

Phil’s lips part in surprise—not gaping, but forming a perfect o. He stares at Dan and then drops his gaze to their hands, which Dan now realises are still joined.

Dan drops Phil’s hand and clears his throat, feeling heat climb up his neck. He’s slightly comforted to see that Phil’s cheeks are in the same state, though he does wonder how a ghost can blush. “I thought ghosts were supposed to be cold,” he says while his mind is on the subject.

“Am I not?”

Dan shakes his head. A thought suddenly occurs to him. “What do I feel like to you?”

Phil giggles at this, tipping his head back and hiding his mouth behind his hand. “You just feel like a person.”

“Oh,” Dan says, slightly disappointed.

They lapse back into silence, curiosity eating at Dan until he finally says, “I don’t mean to be nosy, and you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but just…can I ask how you…you know…”

“Became a ghost?”

Dan nods.

Phil begins chewing on his lip again. He ducks his head, studying his feet, and Dan has almost decided he isn’t going to get an answer when Phil says, “It was an accident.”

Dan doesn’t press him further; he just sits and waits to see if Phil will elaborate.

“There was this guy,” Phil continues after a moment, “in the year above me. I tended to keep to myself at school, and most people left me alone, but this one…maybe I did something to make him hate me, or maybe I was just a convenient thing to take out his frustrations on.”

Dan lowers his eyebrows. “He beat you up?”

“Nothing quite that bad,” Phil rushes to say. “He’d, you know, taunt me, kick the back of my chair in class, trip me in the halls, that sort of thing. It was more annoying than anything else.”

He lets out a deep breath, flicks his gaze up to meet Dan’s, looks back down again. “So this one day, the end of a school day, right? And normally I’d just wait for the halls to clear a bit before leaving my last class, but my brother was coming to visit from uni, so I was in a rush. I ran to the main staircase and sort of—” he claps his hands once “—ran into the guy. Like, ran-right-into-his-shoulder-and-made-him-drop-his-books ran into him. In front of all of his friends, who thought it was hilarious. Before I could apologise, he shoved me back. Only, he was a lot bigger than me, and my back was to the stairs, and I guess I fell back a little farther than he’d intended.

“I must have hit my head pretty hard,” Phil says, rubbing the back of his skull absentmindedly. “I didn’t even realise it at first. Everything hurt for a split second, and then it didn’t, and I was somehow at the bottom of the stairs feeling completely fine.

“People started rushing towards me, crowding around me. I tried to tell them I was okay, but…it was like they couldn’t hear me. It wasn’t until I saw my own body lying at my feet that I realised they really couldn’t.”

Dan stays quiet for a long time after Phil finishes speaking, trying to process it all. Finally, he says, “So what happened to the kid who pushed you?”

Phil shrugs. “Nothing, I guess.”

“What do you mean ‘nothing’?”

“There were no adults around, and I don’t think that many students actually saw what happened. As far as most of the school was concerned, I just fell.”

For most of the conversation, Dan has felt rather detached. He’s been in a trancelike state, hearing Phil’s words and responding with his own, but only understanding any of it in the shallowest of senses, the way one understands logic in a dream.

Now, though, he suddenly finds himself very much awake.

“Who?” he demands, the word coming out surprisingly low and even.

Phil tilts his head to the side. “Who what?”

“Who _pushed_ you?” He stands up quickly and starts pacing the floor. “What was his name? It wasn’t Harvey Crenshaw, was it? Or Trainor? Fuck, I bet it was. I swear, next time I see them—”

“Dan.” He doesn’t realise that Phil has said his name at least half a dozen times until pale fingers suddenly wrap around his wrists, not solid but most definitely _there._ “I don’t know who those people are.”

“Well who was it then?”

“Someone who’s already graduated, I’m sure.”

“Fuck, you’re right. I forgot it was two years ago.” Dan thinks for a second. “I bet Ellington knows who it was and can tell me where to find him. I just have to figure out how to get the information out of her without seeming suspicious.”

 _“Dan,”_ Phil repeats, a little louder this time. “I’m not quite sure what you’re on about, but you’re working yourself into a panic.”

“I’m talking about finding the person who did this and…and…”

“And what?” Phil says, his voice annoyingly kind.

Dan snatches his wrists back, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “I don’t know. Doing _something._ That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? You need revenge before you can finally rest?”

“You watch too many horror films.”

“Said the ghost.”

“Touché.”

“How are you not angry? Don’t you want to at least tell the police?”

“You’re right. I’ll just dial up nine-nine-nine and say I’ve been dead for two years and would like to report the person responsible.”

“Would you take this seriously for _one fucking second?_ ” Dan is shouting now. “This isn’t just about someone pushing you a little too hard. This is about everyone who saw it and didn’t do anything, didn’t _say_ anything. They watched you die and they didn’t even fucking care!”

Phil has been standing there with his mouth partway open, waiting for Dan to finish so he can respond. When the rant is finally over, though, he snaps his mouth closed. He looks at Dan, and he should be angry or hurt, but strangely, Dan finds only sympathy in his expression.

No, not sympathy. Empathy.

The anger that has been ballooning in Dan’s chest deflates, leaving an aching hollowness in its wake. “They killed you, Phil.” Even Dan can hear how pitiful his own voice sounds.

“I know,” Phil says, and he opens his arms. Dan leans into them, closes his eyes, allows the smell of wildflowers and warmth of ocean breezes to envelop him. “I know.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it seems my update schedule for this fic is 'approximately once every two months.' Which is neither intentional nor necessarily permanent, but just the way it's been going. I can't even blame it on school anymore because I graduated like a month ago. My only excuse is that I suck.
> 
> In other news, I changed my tumblr url, so if any of you are looking for me over there, I'm now at butterflyphil. It felt like a much bigger deal than it probably was, but then again like two weeks later some guy on youtube made a like 8-minute video all about changing his username to "danielhowell." At least I'm not that big of a drama queen.


	8. Dandelions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: description of a panic attack in this chapter.

November gives way into December, and winter holiday draws near. Restless energy fills the halls of Brookwood more with each passing day. Even the most serious of students seem unable to concentrate on classes anymore, and most of the teachers have given up trying to teach, putting on movies more often than not.

Dan is in maths class, half paying attention to the movie flickering across the old television set—something about blackjack that only relates to the course material in the loosest of senses—while scrolling through Twitter on his phone when he feels a strange warmth settle on his shoulders.

“Boo!”

Dan jumps, letting out a high-pitched squawk that earns him the attention of the whole classroom for about two seconds before everyone turns back to the movie or their phones. When all eyes are off him, he turns to Phil with wide eyes. “What the _hell_?” he whispers.

Both of Phil’s hands are covering his mouth, probably in an attempt to hide his laughter, but his eyes are crinkled and his shoulders are shaking, so Dan isn’t fooled. “Sorry,” Phil says when he has managed to calm down a little. “I really didn’t think I’d scare you that bad. Just thought it’d be funny. You know, _boo_? ‘Cause I’m a ghost.”

“Ha ha,” Dan mutters dryly. He glances around to make sure no one’s paying attention. “Seriously, what are you doing here? I didn’t even know you could leave the garden.”

“Of course I _can,”_ Phil says, not bothering to whisper. He hops on top of the empty desk next to Dan, pulling his feet up with him so he can sit cross-legged. “I just usually don’t. I like it there.”

“Then why come here now? And don’t sit like that; you’ll draw attention to yourself.”

“I missed you,” Phil states, shrugging. He ignores the second thing Dan said.

Dan feels heat creep into his cheeks. He opens his mouth, but thankfully, the bell rings before he can reply.

“Are you sure it’s a good idea for you to be here?” Dan asks as he leaves the classroom, Phil at his heels. “What if someone recognises you?”

“No one’s going to recognise me.”

“The headmistress might. Or one of the teachers, or even someone who reads the newspaper and saw your obit—”

“Always knew you were a freak, Howell,” a loud voice interrupts Dan’s words. “Didn’t know you were crazy too.”

“What are you on about, Crenshaw?” Dan replies, coming to a stop just under an arm’s length away from the source of the heckling. It’s a risky move; Dan is close enough that Crenshaw could punch him, but he’s also close enough to do the punching if necessary. Crenshaw must see the challenge for what it is, judging by the way the gap between his teeth grows more visible by the second.

“Ya know, they say talking to yourself is the first sign.”

Before Dan can respond, Jason Trainor leans his wiry frame down to not-quite-whisper in his friend’s ear, “Sign of what?”

Crenshaw flaps his hand in Trainor’s general direction, as though swatting at a fly but not really caring if he hits it or not.

“Yes, well,” Dan says clasping his hands together, “as riveting as this conversation is, I was in the middle of one with someone who actually has a brain.”

“Actually,” Phil pipes up, “I don’t have a brain anymore. Not a physical one anyway.”

A laugh bubbles out of Crenshaw’s chest. “An imaginary friend. I can’t believe it. You’re actually mental.”

“Imaginary…?” Dan whips his head around to look at Phil, who is as visible as he is guilty-looking.

“Probably should have mentioned,” Phil says, rubbing the back of his neck, “I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who can see me…or hear me.”

Dan gives himself one second to stare at Phil incredulously before turning to face Crenshaw, who is now laughing loudly enough to draw the attention of everyone else in the hallway. Dan gulps, suddenly overwhelmed by the number of eyes on him, the whispers and laughter mixing with his own too-loud thoughts, the tightness in his chest that he hasn’t felt in quite some time.

“Am I crazy?” he thinks, and it isn’t until Crenshaw throws his head back that he realises he said it aloud.

“He’s having an actual breakdown,” Crenshaw gasps between wheezing breaths. “Oh, this is too good.”

“Maybe you should lay off, Harvey,” says Trainor uncertainly.

“Dan, breathe,” Phil’s voice says behind him.

“Is he okay?” someone whispers.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Should we get a teacher?”

“Are you really that surprised?” Crenshaw again. “Probably runs in the family. I mean, it must, if your mum’s anything to go by. She’s got to be crazy not to have run away from her sicko son too.”

At this point, several things happen at once. To Dan, though, the whole school seems to be underwater. Time is sluggish. He is suffocating.

First, white-hot rage cuts through Dan’s panic, overshadowing his own fear. He clenches his fists, and the only clear thought in his mind is that he’s actually going to beat the shit out of Crenshaw this time.

Before he can lunge, an airy warmth encircles his wrists, restraining him.

“Dan, don’t.”

Crenshaw sneers.

The tardy bell rings.

No one moves.

And, finally:

“That’s enough!”

The noise dies down like a receding wave, the only remaining sound that of a pair of heels clicking down the hall. The headmistress comes to a stop a few feet from the near-fight, and Dan can already see the disappointment on his mother’s face when he has to tell her he’s been expelled again.

He’s surprised, then, when she settles her gaze on Crenshaw, putting her hands on her hips and giving him a look that clearly says she wants an explanation. Now.

“Aunty!” Crenshaw says, annoyingly innocent-sounding. “We were just—”

“I’ve seen enough to know very well what you were doing,” she interrupts, voice cold. She points down the hall. “In my office. I’ll be there in a minute, and you had better be sitting there quietly unless you want your punishment to be much, much worse.”

“But Aunty—”

“Now, Harvey.”

Crenshaw looks just as shocked by this turn of events as everyone else, but he goes without another word, only dragging his feet a little.

The hallway is silent and still.

“Well?” the headmistress says, looking around at the gathered students with a raised eyebrow and her hands on her hips. “Get to class.” She doesn’t shout it, but her words still have the shocked teenagers springing back to life, scurrying towards their classrooms without complaint.

“Not you, Dan,” she says before Dan can get away.

He should have known he wouldn’t be let off the hook so easily.

He looks around for Phil and finds him standing behind the headmistress, staring at Dan with wide, worried eyes.

“…your breathing,” he hears from what sounds like far away. He suddenly realises the headmistress has been speaking to him.

“Huh?”

“I said you need to slow your breathing,” she repeats, voice surprisingly gentle. Dan didn’t even notice that he was hyperventilating until now. “Come on, breathe in, hold it”—she demonstrates what Dan should do—“and out. _Slowly_. Good.”

She stays like that, giving him instructions and reassurances, until the clouds of confusion lift from his brain and his breathing returns to normal. “Do you need to go home?” she asks. “It would be an excused absence.”

Dan shakes his head. “I think I can make it back to class. Just…can I go rinse my face really quick?”

She nods in understanding, taking a small pad of paper and a pen from her pocket. After a moment, she hands him a note addressed to his teacher, excusing him for being late to class. “Take all the time you need.” And then she walks away, presumably to give Crenshaw the scolding of his life.

Dan lets his gaze drift back to Phil, who looks considerably less worried now that Dan has stopped panicking, though some concern lingers in the set of his brow. They walk to the boys’ restroom in silence, Dan only letting out a heavy sigh once he leans back against the (probably filthy) sinks.

“I’m so sorry.” The words start falling from Phil’s mouth too fast, like he’s been holding them in for a while now. “I shouldn’t have come here, or I should have at least warned you that I was going to do it, or kept my big mouth shut when anyone could’ve been watching. I didn’t think…I wasn’t thinking…and then I didn’t know how to help—”

“Phil,” Dan interrupts, too exhausted to process so many words so quickly, “it’s okay.”

“But I should’ve—”

“Can we just…be quiet for a minute? So I can think?”

“Oh.” Dan doesn’t miss the hurt that flashes over Phil’s face or the way he tries to cover it up. “Yeah, of course. I can leave if you want…?” He points to the door, already turning his body towards it like he thinks Dan actually wants to get away from him.

“No,” Dan reaches for Phil’s wrist. It’s barely tangible at the moment, which doesn’t help Dan’s worries much. “No, I want you here. Just…just give me a minute.”

Phil nods. He doesn’t pull his wrist away.

Likewise, Dan doesn’t let go. He finds himself tracing his thumb over the prominent wrist bones, back and forth, and then in circles. It doesn’t feel alive, exactly, but it certainly feels like _something._

“Am I crazy?” he says, not really meaning to speak yet, but it seems his thoughts don’t want to contain themselves anymore.

“What do you mean?”

Dan keeps his eyes focused on Phil’s wrist. “Am I, like, schizophrenic or something?” He looks up just in time to see Phil’s eyes widen in surprise and understanding.

“Is that why you were panicking earlier?”

Dan doesn’t respond.

“Dan…”

“Just…I know you’re not the right person to ask this question, but please, answer it anyway?”

Phil chews his lower lip. “You’re not schizophrenic. And even if you were, that’s not the same as being _crazy._ But it doesn’t matter because you aren’t either of those things…at least, not as far as I’m aware. And I am aware, in general, so I’m definitely real,” Phil babbles, flapping his free hand. “René Descartes and all that jazz.”

Dan huffs. “Well that’s great, Phil, but how do _I_ know you’re real?”

Phil taps a finger to his lips, thinking. “I guess you don’t.”

Dan puts his hands over his face and makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a whimper.

“Then again, I guess that’s true of everybody other than yourself. And everything, for that matter. For all any of us know, the whole of reality is nothing more than a fabrication created by our own minds.”

“Oh god.”

There is a tugging on Dan’s forearms, pulling his hands away from his face. He opens his eyes, and there is Phil’s face, smiling softly, apologetically.

“What I mean to say,” Phil says, “is that just because you can’t _prove_ something’s real doesn’t mean it’s not.”

The thing is, Dan likes knowing things. He has always favored facts and certainty over the unknown and the unknowable. But in that moment, though he doesn’t _know_ that Phil exists, he feels it. He feels the warmth of his hands and sees the flecks of yellow in the blue of his irises, but more importantly, he feels his existence the way he feels his mother’s concern or Louise’s affection: intangible yet plainly evident.

Phil clears his throat, and Dan realises he has been staring. He frees himself of Phil’s grasp, putting a little space between them and hoping that Phil doesn’t notice the blush Dan is sure is spreading across his cheeks.

“So,” Dan says, ready to change the subject, “why do you think I’m the only one who can see you?”

Phil shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not even really sure you are. I just know you’re the only person I’ve run into so far who can.”

Dan doesn’t know how to respond to that. Luckily, he doesn’t have to; before he can come up with a decent reply, Phil continues.

“When I first, you know, fell and everything, even after I realised my classmates and teachers couldn’t see or hear me…it took me a while to accept it. I thought it must be a dream or some sort of out-of-body experience…which I guess it technically was, but…well, you know.

“Anyway, I went home—ran, actually, for probably the first time ever. My dad and brother weren’t there yet, but my mum was.” Here, Phil pauses, bringing his hands together to play with his fingers. He watches them instead of Dan. “I was with her when she got the phone call.”

“Phil…”

“I did everything I could to try to tell her I was there,” Phil continues, and now his hands are definitely shaking, “but she couldn’t hear me, and I hadn’t figured out how to make myself tangible yet. All I could do was watch while she sat on the floor in my room and cried.

“My dad and brother showed up after a while, and I tried to talk to them, but they couldn’t hear me either. They all just looked…broken. And I couldn’t do anything about it.”

Dan reaches out and places his hands over Phil’s to stop the trembling. Phil glances up with an appreciative smile before his expression slips back into something more somber.

“I stayed there for a couple weeks, trying anything I could to communicate with them. I even learned to pick things up. I tried moving objects and writing notes, but when my mum saw, all it did was scare her. It was…too hard watching my family mourn and not being able to comfort them. So I left.

“Only, I didn’t know where to go. I wasn’t close with anyone outside of my immediate family. So I just kind of…wandered…until I came upon that shed. The one I took you to when it was raining.”

Dan nods in recognition.

“I cleaned it up as best I could, made it into a little home for myself. And of course, it wasn’t long before I noticed the garden nearby. It wasn’t like it is now when I found it, by the way; what little wasn’t already dead was tangled to the point that you couldn’t walk around without trampling something. But, for some reason, the plants, unlike people, sort of…responded to me.”

“How so?” Dan asks.

Phil lets out a short laugh. “You know, it’s funny. I could never keep plants alive when I was. But after I died, it’s like my presence encouraged them to grow, even if I didn’t pull up weeds or water them much. And the animals too! The birds and the squirrels and the occasional dog could see me, and they’d keep me company sometimes.”

Just then, Phil gives a little cough (which is definitely fake; Dan’s pretty sure ghosts don’t even have lungs). “It took…an embarrassingly long time for me to figure out that I didn’t really need to keep going back to the shed for shelter from the weather. Ghost perks, you know. So I started spending all my time in the garden, and I’ve been there pretty much ever since.”

“So ghosts can just…go wherever they want? They aren’t, like, bound to the place where they died?”

“Well apparently not in my case,” Phil answers with a chuckle. “I don’t know if that’s true for other ghosts. I’ve never actually met one.”

“That sounds lonely,” Dan says without thinking and then immediately wants to slap himself. Like Phil really needs a reminder that he’s basically alone in the world.

Phil, however, doesn’t seem to take offence. “It’s not so bad,” he says, the corner of his mouth ticking up. “I’ve got the flowers and the birds and, well…” he trails off, smile growing even as the color in his cheeks does the same.

Dan finds that he can’t help but mirror the expression. They stay like that for a minute, soft, shy smiles and slightly averted eyes, until Phil speaks up again.

“You should probably get to class before it ends.”

“Oh,” Dan says, hand coming up to rub the back of his neck automatically, “right.” He starts for the door. “Coming with?”

“Nah,” says Phil. “I think I’ve caused enough trouble for one day. Are you okay now?”

Dan nods, telling himself that the disappointment he feels is silly; he can go see Phil in the garden later, after all. He reaches for the door handle.

“Thanks for coming to see me, by the way,” he says if for no other reason than to put off his departure.

“It led to you having a panic attack in the middle of the school hallway,” Phil points out, guilt still lingering in the lines around his eyes.

Dan shrugs. “I appreciate the thought.” And then, before he can talk himself out of it, he walks back to where Phil is standing and pecks him quickly on the cheek, instantly replacing the look of guilt with one of surprise.

By the time Phil’s hand comes up to touch the spot, Dan is already back at the door. He only casts one glance back over his shoulder as he darts into the hall, but he’s pretty sure he sees Phil sporting his softest smile yet.


	9. Bittersweets pt. 1

Winter break is a blessing that ends too soon. Normally, Dan is perfectly content to spend any and all time away from school lounging around the house. This year, he spends nearly every day with Phil.

The only days they spend apart are Christmas and the two days surrounding it, which Dan and his mother spend with Dan’s grandparents in Brighton. Dan even invites Phil to tag along, creating an elaborate plan to sneak Phil into the back of his mother’s car, but Phil insists that he spend time with his family without Phil there to distract him. Dan can admit that he probably has a point, but that doesn’t stop him from missing Phil terribly during their time apart.

“What’s wrong, Little Bear?” Dan’s grandmother asks on Christmas morning, shortly after everyone has finished opening presents. Dan’s mother and grandfather have wandered into the kitchen for their second and third cups of coffee, respectively, their voices just loud enough to drift into the living room where Dan is helping his grandmother clean up wrapping paper but not quite loud enough for Dan to understand what they’re saying. “Father Christmas didn’t bring you what you wanted?”

Dan glances over at the (probably far too expensive) gaming system his grandparents had given him, signed “love, Santa,” of course, so that he couldn’t object. “It’s not that. I mean, I’m fine.”

His grandmother continues to peer at him from behind her horn-rimmed glasses, eyes milky with cataracts and heavy with a look that says she knows Dan is full of shit but is too polite to call him out on it directly. It’s a look Dan knows well.

He sighs. “Gran, do you ever…” He looks down at the snowflake-patterned paper in his hands, wads it up a little tighter. “Have you ever missed someone…like really _really_ missed someone…even though you knew you shouldn’t?”

“Ah.” She nods—in answer to his question or in understanding, Dan isn’t sure—and plops into a brown recliner that has looked like it’s going to collapse any second for the last ten years at least. She presses her lips into a thin line, making her look older than she is, and rubs a hand under her chin. “You know,” she says after a moment, lowering her voice slightly, “I never liked your father.”

Dan raises his eyebrows in surprise. “Really?” He’s so taken aback by the information that he momentarily forgets that it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with his question. “You never acted like you hated him.”

“That’s because I have manners,” she huffs. “And I didn’t _hate_ him. Didn’t trust him, more like. Mitzi—you remember that scrappy little dog I used to have— _she_ hated him from the first time your mother brought him home, and she never warmed up to him. I trusted her judgement.”

“More than my mum’s?” Dan doesn’t mean to sound accusatory, but that’s the way it comes out.

Luckily, his grandmother doesn’t seem to take offense. “Well that’s the thing, isn’t it? Just because I didn’t like him didn’t mean she shouldn’t, a fact she told me plainly the one time I made the mistake of voicing my opinion.”

“Guess you told her so then,” Dan mumbles, resting his chin on his hands as he takes a break from cleaning to plop down onto a nearby ottoman.

“Not at all. She was right.”

Dan gives her a questioning look.

She tips her head forward so she can look at him over her glasses. “You don’t stop loving someone just because someone else thinks you should. Even if you actually should. Falling out of love is neither fast nor easy. And she did love him at the time. For quite a while afterward too.”

“And then I went and screwed it all up and made him leave. I know.”

She purses her lips again. “I’m going to tell you something your mother doesn’t want to,” she says after a moment, voice now little more than a whisper. “I understand she means well, but I think you have a right to know.”

“I already know he didn’t leave because of ‘marriage problems.’ I’m not that dense.”

“I know you aren’t. I mean, they _were_ having problems—we all know that—but the timing was no coincidence. Your mother…well, I think she hopes that if she keeps telling you it was, you might believe it. But I need you to know that he didn’t leave because of you either. Not exactly.

“I know you heard some of the horrible things your father said after the…incident at your old school. I know he said some of them to you directly. But what your mother seems intent on keeping from you is what he wanted to _do._ ”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn’t want to leave, Dan. He wanted to kick you out.”

For several seconds, Dan can do nothing but sit in stunned silence. “Wha…” he starts when he finally regains control of his mouth. “Why didn’t he…?”

“It was your mother who kicked _him_ out. She wasn’t about to put you out on the streets, and she definitely wasn’t going to let someone who spoke that way about you live in her house. So she gave him a choice: either he could leave or you both would.”

Dan studies his hands while he processes this new information. Really, it shouldn’t matter much. He already believed that his father was disgusted with him; it didn’t sting too badly to find out it was true. But to think that his mother—the same person he thought only continued to give him shelter out of a sense of obligation—had ended her marriage _for_ him…

“She loves you, Little Bear.” Dan doesn’t realise that his grandmother is leaning forward until she places her hands on either side of his face. “Remember that when she makes mistakes.”

“You think she still loves my dad too?”

She makes a humming noise, dropping one hand to her side and bringing the other to rest under her chin. “In a way, probably. But we shouldn’t fault her for that.” She inclines her head to look at him over her glasses. “You shouldn’t fault yourself either.”

Dan nods, slowly realising why his grandmother brought up this seemingly random topic. “Gran…not that I don’t appreciate the speech, but when I said I missed someone I shouldn’t, I was talking about a friend. I mean, I just saw him two days ago, and I’ll see him again in two more. We should be able to spend a few days apart without me missing him this much.”

“Oh?” his grandmother says. A knowing gleam appears in her eye. “ _Oh.”_

“Gran…”

“This friend wouldn’t happen to be the mysterious Phil your mother has told me about, would it?”

Dan brings a hand up to rub at the back of his neck. “Maybe.”

“Mm-hm.”

“ _Grandma_.”

His grandmother chuckles. “Just tell me this. Do dogs like him?”

Dan thinks for a moment. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen him around a dog. Birds like him though.”

At this, his grandmother throws her head back and laughs. “Definitely a keeper then.”

Dan’s cheeks heat up. He almost protests that it isn’t like that, but with everything that’s happened between him and Phil recently, he realises he’s not sure that’s entirely true.

“Well,” Dan’s grandmother says, leveling her gaze back on Dan with a kind smile, “friend or no, I’m glad you’ve found someone worth missing.”

Dan can’t help but smile back.

“Me too.”

## ❁❁❁

 “How was your trip?”

They’re sitting in the sunniest patch of grass they could find, the weather finally growing so cold that even Phil’s magic can’t keep the garden warm enough for them to stay in the shade. Of course, Phil isn’t affected by the cold, but Dan appreciates him suggesting the spot in order to keep Dan warm anyway.

“It was okay,” Dan replies, tangling his fingers in the tall grass and breathing in the smell of wildflowers for the first time in days. “I missed you though.”

Phil tilts his head to the side playfully. “Is that all you did for three whole days? Miss me?”

Dan bumps their shoulders together. “I take it back. It was a welcome break from your ghostly ass.”

“Nope, you already said you missed me, no take-backs.”

“Hmph,” Dan says, crossing his arms in mock annoyance.

This time, Phil bumps his shoulder against Dan’s. “If it’s any consolation, I missed you too.”

Dan peeks up through his overgrown fringe. The warm smile that greets him makes his heart flutter in his chest, and he has to look away again. “I had an interesting talk with my grandma while I was gone,” he says, changing the subject with the first topic that comes to mind.

“Oh? What about?”

Dan hesitates, wondering exactly how much he’s ready to tell Phil.

Then again, he thinks, if he was able to talk about it with his grandmother with relatively little ease, he should be more than ready to talk about it with his best friend.

“My dad,” he says.

Phil’s smile fades. “Oh.”

“Nothing too bad,” Dan reassures. “Just that his leaving might not have been quite as much my fault as I originally thought.”

Phil nods, curiosity evident in the set of his brow but lips pursed tight as though he’s physically trying to keep the questions from spilling out.

“I guess I never really told you what happened with all that,” he says, though he knows for a fact that he hasn’t.

Phil shakes his head.

“I can tell you now…if you want to know.”

“You don’t have to,” Phil says quickly.

“I know.” Dan grips the grass a little tighter, but he offers Phil his most reassuring smile. “I…I think I want to though. If that’s okay.”

They lock eyes, a conversation that words could never express taking place between them in a span of seconds.

Then Phil nods.

Dan takes a deep breath. “Right.” He exhales loudly through his mouth. “Well, you know about my old school, right?”

Phil nods again.

“Well when…” Dan pauses to run a hand through his hair. “I think I’m telling this in all the wrong order.”

“It’s okay.” Phil places a hand on top of Dan’s, light and warm, and Dan feels himself relax a fraction. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Dan studies their overlapping hands for a moment, swallows, and turns his palm over to lace their fingers together. As Dan restarts his story, snow begins to fall.

“There was a boy...”


	10. Bittersweets pt. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look who's back back back from the dead dead dead.
> 
> WARNING: mentions of non-consensual kissing in this chapter (no actual non-consensual kissing though)

_“Hey.”_

_Dan whipped his head around so fast he nearly fell off his bike before he’d even started pedaling. He managed to steady himself and glared up at the source of the voice. A broad-shouldered boy with curly blond hair grinned back at him._

_“I’m Sam,” the boy said, though Dan hadn’t asked._

_“I know who you are,” Dan said. He’d never spoken to the boy, but he’d seen him around, usually with an army of fellow student athletes surrounding him and a girl hanging off his arm._

_“That’s good.” Sam took a step closer, teeth glinting in the sun. “I know who you are too.”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“You’re the fairy all the other guys on the team are afraid to change clothes in front of.”_

_“I don’t even play a sport.”_

_Sam shrugged._

_Dan squinted, studying the boy’s face for any signs of mocking but found none. “What do you want, exactly?”_

_Sam shrugged again. He’d gotten a lot closer without Dan noticing, Dan suddenly realised. Close enough to make out the faint freckles spilling across his nose._

_Something in the back of Dan’s mind told him he should lean back, get some space, but something else made him stay where he was._

_“Have you ever done it then?” Sam’s tongue darted out, wetting his lips. “Done things with a boy?”_

_Dan felt his cheeks grow hot. “I…well I—”_

_“You haven’t, have you?” Sam cocked his head to the side. “Everyone looks at you like you’re ready to jump their bones if they’re not careful, but they don’t have to. Bet you’ve never even kissed a boy.”_

_“I haven’t kissed anyone.”_

_Sam nodded as if he expected this. “Do you want to?” He leaned a little closer._

_Dan swallowed, eyes darting around the courtyard. Most people had already rushed home as soon as the school day ended, but a few still lingered in the distance._

_“Not here.”_

_That easy grin started to slide back onto Sam’s face but was interrupted by a look of surprise when Dan hopped off his bike, grabbed his hand, and led them back into the school._

_Some teachers were still in their classrooms while other milled around the hall, pretending to monitor the students while gossiping with each other. None of them gave the boys more than a passing glance as Dan led them down the hall to the boys’ toilets._

_The door barely had a chance to close behind them before Sam was backing Dan towards the wall. Dan hit his hip against the sink but barely had time to swear before the press of warm, chapped lips silenced him._

_Sam pulled away after only a second, all sense of confidence and cockiness gone from his wide, blinking eyes, and Dan suddenly wondered if that had been his first kiss as well. He mustered a reassuring smile, though his heart was pounding wildly in his chest, and was glad to see Sam smile back._

_They leaned back in at the same time, more sure, fingers tangling in hair and hemlines. Their noses bumped as Sam tilted his head to readjust, but the gentle gasp Dan let out allowed their tongues to meet, wet and sloppy. Dan found himself both disgusted and thrilled._

_He was far too distracted to notice the door swinging open._

_He did notice the warmth suddenly leaving his lips, though, and he felt himself being shoved back hard enough that his skull hit the wall with a sickening crack._

_Through the ringing in his ears, he made out the sound of yelling. Understanding trickled in slower, but he definitely heard the words “tried” and “forced” and “fault.” His vision cleared to reveal a small crowd forming outside the open restroom door, teachers and students alike glancing between a crying Sam, the tall, blond man shouting at him, and Dan, still slumped against the wall._

_He barely had a chance to wonder how he managed to get himself involved in all this when the shouting man rounded on Dan, face nearly as red as his polo shirt, which Dan now realised identified him as the school’s football coach. Dan prepared himself to be reamed out just as Sam had. What he didn’t expect was to be grabbed by the front of his shirt, or to see a meaty fist level itself with his face._

_He braced himself._

_The punch never came._

_“Calm down Silas.”_

_Dan peeked through cracked eyelids to see Louise, whom he hadn’t even noticed standing amongst crowd, with one hand on the coach’s shoulder and the other over his fist. She definitely wasn’t strong enough to stop him, but he lowered his fist nonetheless. The other remained clenched in Dan’s shirt._

_“He attacked my son!” the coach said._

_“Attacked?” Dan said, taking far too long to register the other key word. Of course he would be too out of touch to know that Sam was the football coach’s son. “We were just—”_

_“Oh, I know what you were doing, you sick piece of—”_

_“Silas,” Louise said, more firmly this time. “We don’t know exactly what happened.”_

_“I saw them! I saw_ him _…” he raised his fist again, pointer finger now extended. Dan noticed it was trembling._

_“Ugh,” Silas said and released Dan’s shirt as if it had burned him. He made his way toward the door. “Come on, Sam, you’ll be late for practice.”_

_“But Dad—”_

_“I said, come_ on _.”_

_Sam cast one last regretful glance at Dan before following his father out the door._

## ❁❁❁

“…Apparently he told his dad that I had forced myself on him. Which was still an embarrassment to the family, but less than voluntarily making out with another guy would have been.” Dan pulls a handful of dying grass out of the earth and then drops it, letting it mix in the air with the snow flurries. “Things could have gone worse than they did. I could have ended up in juvie instead of just kicked out of school. But that would have been a scandal, and the very rich and important football coach didn’t want his son’s incident embarrassing their family any more than it already had. So the school expelled me for ‘bullying,’ and everyone was more or less happy.”

“But you didn’t even do it!” Phil protests.

Dan shrugs. “Didn’t matter. No one was going to believe me over a school coach and his star-athlete son.”

“You could have sued them over that! You could’ve…”

“Could’ve what?” Dan scoffs. “Gone to court with my one remaining parent and told the judge that the supposed victim was lying and all the witnesses were wrong?” He realises that he has tightened his grip on Phil’s hand so much that he thinks he might actually squeeze right through it. He loosens his hold and sighs. “And it’s not like I really wanted news spreading any farther than it already had either. Not that that mattered. Wokingham’s not that big. Gossip travels fast.”

Phil tightens his hold on Dan’s hand, possibly tighter than Dan had been holding his a moment ago. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just more inclined to get angry at people treating you badly than at people who’ve wronged me personally.”

“Phil, you were literally murdered.”

Phil shrugs. “Things happen.”

Dan shakes his head in disbelief.

“What about your dad though?” Phil asks suddenly. “You said your grandma told you something about him?”

“Oh.” His dad’s reason for leaving has been on his mind nonstop for the last two days, but for the past half hour, Dan realises, he’s forgotten about it almost completely. “It’s…not important.”

Phil stares at him knowingly.

“Okay, it is,” Dan relents, leaning into Phil’s side. “But right now I kind of just want to enjoy this. Okay?”

Phil opens his mouth, probably to point out that sharing past traumas while sitting on the icy cold ground isn’t what most people would consider enjoyable. Instead, he leans into Dan’s side, resting his head on top of Dan’s. “Okay. You’ll tell me when you’re ready?”

“I will,” Dan promises.  


End file.
